Sofia Design Week weergeven op een grotere kaart

Design is all around. It is in the toothbrush, in the taps and in the glass of water. In those comfy sneakers, the bag over the shoulder and the good old jeans. In the street plates, the bench on the sidewalk and the newspaper’s font. In the yoghurt package, the bicycle and the steel cutlery… Every day everyone of us uses hundreds of objects. No matter whether we pay conscious attention to their shapes, functions and esthetics, no matter whether we take active interest in design, the latter is a tangible presence in our life, influencing and changing it.

Sofia Design Week 2011 will set out to prove the above statement by breaking the everyday into its constituting elements of design. The program will be rich, intriguing and spread all over town. Plain and simple, through various examples we shall demonstrate how design solves problems, makes life easier, adds a flavor to the world, and expresses the true self of its consumer as much as it expresses the one of its creator.

We keep on working for a real change in the environment we inhabit, we strive to leave a sustainable trace everywhere we go, and we hope to inspire and bring together people who share common passion for design. More than ever we believe in the power of good ideas to move the world.

Curators 2011

As usual, a compact bunch of bright and capable individuals is working on this year’s edition of the festival. In charge of the ship is again Boryana Zafirova, but it is the curators who have the pleasure and the responsibility to select the contents of Sofia Design Week.

This year these are Maria Todorova, Valentin Vodev and Adriana Dimitrova.

Maria Todorova is one of the most emblematic and well-known figures amongst Bulgarian ad professionals. She has been working in the fields of design and advertising for 15 years now, that started after graduating an Art School and the National Academy of Arts (majoring in Poster Design and Visual Communication). Later a summer school in Graphic Design at London’s Saint Martin was also added to her academic credentials, but it is her experience where the more interesting things happen – Maria has been the Art Director of one agency (Мccann Еrickson), the Creative Director of two (EURO RSCG and Ogilvy) and part of the Agency of the Year no less than four times (according to the awards of the Advertising Agencies Association in Bulgaria). So, to make her own agency for advertising and communication and call it Next-DC, after all this (in the end of 2010), was to say the least, logical.

Maria loves her job, always sports a positive attitude and never lacks the energy to take a project to the end in the best possible way. She is behind this year’s Design is All Around theme and is responsible for the presence of some of the most interesting and attractive names in the forum.

next-dc.com

Valentin Vodev is a product designer. He was born in Sofia, but studied Industrial Design in Vienna and Product Design in London. To this day his life and work are divided between these two cities, although his own Pixstudio keeps him mostly in Vienna and these days (around tasks related to Sofia Design Week) he also has to include Sofia in his itinerary quite often.

Vodev’s client projects includes: Mothercare, Villery & Boch, BASF, Tetra Pak, Absolut Vodka, and others. He has designed many award-winning products – his electric bicycle Biquattro won a Red Dot Award in 2009. Valentin has taken part in countless prestigious exhibitions such as 100% Design in London and Tokyo. He also collaborated with Ron Arad for his exhibition at the Barbican Art Gallery in London. For Valentin design is a cocktail of logic, aesthetics and art. His contribution to this years program is the majority of the product designer names expected to attend.

pixstudio.net

Adriana Dimitrova has been a Contributing Editor at One Magazine for five years now. As such, her primary task is to write and commission stories on design and architecture, but that did not stop her from actively participating in the organization and realization of the first edition of Sofia Design Week (2009) and the first two editions of Sofia Architecture Week (2008 and 2009). Apart from being a journalist and a writer by degree, Adriana is also an explorer by nature. She never formally studied design or architecture, but she has been following these fields and digging deep into them ever since her student days. Adriana has the complete archive of the last five years’ Wallpaper, I.D., ELLE Décor and Apartamento.

For this year’s edition, Adriana selected a good part of the Open program contents, arranged for some of the forum’s biggest names and curated her first exhibition („Is there or isn’t there: Bulgarian product design now”).

Why „Design is All Around”?

The topic was chosen as a result of our wish to make this year’s edition interesting and useful not only to the professionals, but to a wider audience. We find it important for society to be aware of what is behind the poster on the street or the chairs in the restaurant, to look at the paper kiosk on the corner with new eyes. We would love to talk design with as many people as possible, to share with them the latest trends and to modernize together what we all know of the subject. The idea is to turn everyone’s attention to our surroundings and each object that belongs to them. This is a way to obtain a more critical view towards them, as well as to learn to aspire for better alternatives. Because nobody deserves to settle with an ugly urban environment.

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