On a beautiful June evening in 2019, the Teatro Sociale opera house in Como, Italy, almost as famous as La Scala, is packed to capacity. Stylish tailcoats and ball gowns add extra solemnity to one of the most beautiful halls in Europe. Niccolò Paganini performed La campanella on its stage, and Giuseppe Verdi’s operas left audiences breathless.
But on this June evening, the spectators did not come to enjoy the classic. The final ceremony of the A’ Design Award & Competition – one of the most prestigious competitions for designers in the world – begins.
900 are the guests – people from business, from art circles, jury, journalists. They filled the four-story hall to capacity. Awardees take the century-old stage to the sounds of the opera orchestra to receive their statuettes. Among them there is a Bulgarian – Zlatina Petrova. She is the winner in the web design category, and her project has competed against 2,900 other participants.
THIS IS THE HIGHEST AWARD RECEIVED BY A BULGARIAN IN WEB DESIGN
“Stepping on this stage was a special and very exciting moment for me – says 31-year-old Zlatina Petrova. “I was very grateful to the entire team with whom we realized the project, and happy because I fulfilled my dream, which 10 years ago seemed impossible to me – to share with the world something I created.”
Going back 10 years, we see Zlatina Petrova having just graduated from the French High School in Sofia. She is hesitant about what to record. She wants to learn something creative, since she loved to draw since she was little, she even won several children’s competitions. But applying to the Academy of Arts after a French high school seems like a mission impossible to her.
At that time, her brother Bojan, who is five years older, was a student of macroeconomics and finance in Germany. He advises her to write down something related to business, telling her “this is an opportunity to look at your dream from a different angle.” Zlatina Petrova enrolled in Economic Management at SU “St. Kliment Ohridski”. He studied for a year and transferred to the Paris Institute for Political Studies Science Po, majoring in Economics and Sociology.
Zlatina Petrova spent the next three years in France. But old love does not rust. No matter how good the education, the university, the environment, Zlatina Petrova lacks something. And this is creativity, to create something beautiful and useful for the world from nothing.
He has many friends in Paris, among them graphic design people. They set her on fire for this profession, even though she didn’t study for it. “They told me: Zlati, you can learn by yourself and start using graphic programs. It seemed very alien to me at the time, but I tried,” she recalls.
Without thinking, with the money saved, he bought licensed software and began to teach himself. He uses books and mostly YouTube videos. “When you’re learning something artistic and you’re self-taught, it’s very difficult because there’s no one to tell you what’s right and what’s wrong. In terms of web design, absolutely. There are many practices that have been established, but until you understand them, and that alone, time passes,” says Zlatina Petrova. It takes her years to grasp the logic of things and focus on it.
In 2012, he finished his higher education and returned to Bulgaria with the idea of starting work as a web designer. “My parents supported me in this crazy venture of mine, for which I am very grateful,” says Zlatina Petrova. – Imagine what happened to them – their child comes home from abroad and tells them that what he studied during the last three years abroad and one in Bulgaria, in which they invested a lot, will not work for him, and the profession, with that will deal with is something that has learned on the Internet.’
But things do not happen at all the way Zlatina Petrova imagines them. It turns out that in Bulgaria at that time there was no great demand for graphic designers. He goes to job interviews tirelessly. “Often, when I told them that I graduated in economics and sociology and retrained myself to my great passion in life, the interview ended,” she recalls with a smile the difficulties. But Zlatina Petrova does not lose motivation, she becomes even more confident that she will succeed. She says that every rejection stimulates her. He even creates a “Motivation” folder on his desktop. It contains all the rejections she received over the years and the reasons for them. “Even today, I keep re-reading that folder to show me that with drive and hard work, anyone can succeed.”
Unsolicited by anyone, Zlatina Petrova decided to create her own art studio, which she named “WebCloud”, and to obtain a diploma as a web designer. He enrolled in a master’s degree at the New Bulgarian University. “Overall, most of the things I was learning were clear to me, but I built on and reinforced quite a bit.”
MY WORK GIVES ME THE OPPORTUNITY TO WORK WITH PEOPLE FROM DIFFERENT FIELDS AND EVERY SINGLE PROJECT IS A WONDERFUL ADVENTURE FOR ME
While studying, the young designer also begins to work for her name. It focuses on projects of foreign clients. Develops sites, graphics, interface. She gets better and better and gets more and more flattering reviews, which brings her satisfaction and new customers. And so, by word of mouth, Zlatina Petrova is known in the circles as a very reliable and successful designer. This was noticed by Adam Fairhead, owner of Fairhead Creative, a web design studio based in Tallahassee, Florida.
He contacted the young designer through the startup funding platform Angel.com, where Petrova has an account. “One fine day I received an email from Adam: ‘Hi Zlatina, I came across your portfolio. I saw that you have a very interesting view on design, a great affinity for web design, logic – for what makes a good website. So far, we have seen few such applications in our country. We really like your profile, we are looking for a designer, do you want to work for us”, Zlatina Petrova tells about the moment that changed her career.
In the following days, he researched the company in detail and realized that it has a very good reputation in design circles. It is aimed at social entrepreneurs, helping them create solutions on a global scale. “I always wanted to work with a cause and I accepted the job.” Within two years, Zlatina Petrova went from being a designer to being the creative director of the company. He mainly works remotely, going to headquarters for strategic meetings.
At Fairhead Creative, Zlatina Petrova and her team entrusted the BuiltForImpact project. It is a site that supports companies and social entrepreneurs to stand out online, increase their influence among consumers and change the environment for the better. The design is inspired by social networks and the actions of users in them.
People scroll vertically through a story that looks visually stimulating. They stop scrolling on the part of the story that catches their attention. They click to learn more about the product or service. They engage by submitting an inquiry, purchasing the product, or taking another action. For this project, the team researched best practices in web design, conducted telephone interviews with professionals, managers, marketers and users of digital services and products.
MARKETING LIGHTS SETH GODIN AND FRANK KERN ALSO PARTICIPATE IN THE MASSIVE PROJECT
“They were our mentors. They gave us feedback as we created the website template to meet people’s needs. Our meetings, conference calls, were extremely inspiring. I learned a lot from them and I am glad that I had this wonderful opportunity”, says Zlatina Petrova.
With the support of Godin and Kern, the Bulgarian designer and her team are building a very beautiful and business-friendly website. He uploaded it in 2019 to the already mentioned Teatro Sociale stage to receive the highest design award. This prize fulfills her dream, gives her the confidence to continue developing. But at the beginning of 2020, he realized that he could not go any further with Fairhead Creative. “The next step was to become a partner in the company, but there was no such opportunity,” says Zlatina Petrova.
And so she returns to her original idea – to develop her own creative studio. At the end of January this year, he parted ways with Fairhead Creative and with his mentor Adam Fairhead and founded Brandly Collective. The idea of the name is very indicative of the philosophy of the business: “United around the brand”. The company started with a capital of BGN 100,000 – entirely own funds of Zlatina Petrova and her partner Ivan Maslarov. They quickly put together a team, a large part of which Zlatina Petrova has worked with over the years, knows well and can count on people’s skills.
In addition to Sofia, the young company also opened an office in New York, at 99 Wall Street, because Zlatina Petrova believes that in the USA there are great opportunities to realize yourself, develop and prove yourself digitally. In less than six months, the team grew to 25 people, most of them freelancers. They quickly build a reputation and a portfolio. By the end of August, when I spoke with Zlatina Petrova, the company had already managed to recover a large part of its initial investment. “Every project for me is a wonderful adventure,” says Zlatina Petrova and points out that among their clients are the fashion brand Alessa, the Council of Women in Business in Bulgaria, the “For Our Children” foundation, the website The BraveStories, the transaction application Propy Inc, Copernicus space program. The company is currently creating a new crowdfunding platform in the field of book publishing and building a Swiss startup fintech platform.
The young team is completely united around the idea of everyone working for the client’s brand. This is also the slogan of the company – “One for all, all for the brand”. It is borrowed from Alexandre Dumas’ book The Three Musketeers. The novel is one of Zlatina Petrova’s favorites.
THE TIRED WORK OF THE YOUNG DESIGNER AND HER TEAM BRING THEM A NEW AWARD FROM A’ DESIGN AWARD & COMPETITION
This time in the Mobile Apps & Software category. They won it with a concept for a mobile application that was developed with the Listen Foundation and aims to support young hard-of-hearing people who want to develop professionally. “They often encounter difficulties, especially in Bulgaria, companies do not want to hire them. The platform makes the connection between employers and the hard of hearing. The idea is to facilitate communication through technology,” says Zlatina Petrova.
After another design prize, Zlatina Petrova believes that she can give a lot to the online space. “In recent months, we have heard how everything is in crisis, how it has stopped, how bad it is. The good thing about the crisis is that it gives us the opportunity to learn to be adaptable and flexible”, says Zlatina Petrova and quotes Darwin’s thought that it is not the strongest of a species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one that best adjusts. It seems that Zlatina Petrova is one of those people who manage to adapt and, like a musketeer, defend the good in the world.
