Short official bio for press people and those in a hurry

Cristian KIT Paul is a founding partner and Creative Director of Brandient, the brand strategy & design consultancy.

Before setting up the consultancy with his partners, he cut his teeth many years in the advertising industry and also as a freelance graphic designer in Romania and Singapore.

Presently, KIT is deep-rooted in corporate identity while publicly advocating the role of design in business and society. The works in his portfolio have won not only numerous international design awards but also the daily recognition of the Romanian consumer.

The long version now — first, about this website

What on Earth is this website?

I’m blogging since 2003 and this is my weblog — a blog, that is. Kit·blog has more than one face: is a personal web site, a design blog, a photoblog, a blog about Romania, a Macintosh blog, and so on.

Actually, Kit·blog is more than you’ll find here at kitblog.com, because the first Kit·blog is located on an Apple iDisk along with its 500+ posts and almost 2000 comments but its almost 2000 comments are gone now.

The purpose of Kit·blog

Kit·blog exists for a number of diverse reasons — here are a few of them in no particular order:

• Design. I think it is important to write about design with the clear mission to educate the local entrepreneurs and business people. Design is one of the most undervalued business/entrepreneurial tools in Romania. The business class already knows and believes in the power of advertising, but is yet uneducated about the even more potent tool of design. It is at least as important to write about design in order to point the young fellow designers in the right direction. There are many local design blogs that spread knowledge in the form of linkdumps — and that’s useful, too — but there’s a need for voices that deal with design as a profession and its issues: best practice, legislation etc.
• I write because, as a MIT paper on research says, “Writing down your ideas is the best way to debug them. Usually you will find that what seemed perfectly clear in your head is in fact an incoherent mess on paper.”
• This blog serves as an networking tool: people who contact me because of the things I write are people interested in the same issues I am, thus it’s highly probable that we’ll find enjoyable talking face to face: it’s a means for finding people with preset affinities.
• It’s a place I can talk about my company. Brandient is not my job — is a centerpiece in my life, something I like talking about and being proud of.
• A busy schedule often keeps me away from my friends months in a row, but they know I’m still breathing (and where) by keeping an eye on this website.
• Writing here is a way to exercise and improve my command of English language. Not being a native English speaker (I’m sure you noticed that by now) means that writing is a slow and hard endeavor for me, therefore practice can only help.
• Being annoyed by the foreigner’s startling ignorance about Romania (they stopped asking whether we have electricity only not long ago) is inevitable yet unproductive — we have to work our way out of that at individual level until (and after) an official effort in this direction will debut. Blogs can depict a more accurate and credible image of contemporary Romania than TV commercials flights on CNN can.

Here. Now you know.

Secondly, about myself

And you are…?

I am Cristian KIT Paul. While everybody calls me KIT¹, the name in my passport is Cristian Paul: the other day somebody sent me a package addressed to “Kit Paul” — the lady at the Post Office would have rather gave me her life than my damn package.

I was born in Baia Mare (that’s the northern Transylvania) in 1971. This generally means I’m too young to be a great identity designer, but hey, nobody is perfect.

I live in Bucharest since 1996, although during 2000 I lived for a while in Singapore. Before Bucharest I spent six years in Cluj-Napoca while studying computers at Polytechnics and design at the Academy of Visual Arts — until I dropped out of both in order to incorporate the first design studio I was part of. See more about my work experience below.

Seasoned

I’ve been a designer, an art director, a senior art director, then a group creative director and now a creative director and partner, but that’s for show-off — in fact, I’m happy to be a designer once again. And I intend to keep it that way.

• 2002 — Founded Brandient, the brand & design consultancy
• 2001 — Returned from Singapore and dived head first again: Group Creative Director, D’Arcy DMB&B Romania
• 2000 — Took a “sabbatical” year off from advertising and worked graphic design and motion graphics as a freelance designer in Bucharest and Singapore
• 1998 — Senior Art Director, Tempo Advertising
• 1996 — Art Director, Graffiti/BBDO Romania
• 1995 — Founded Draft Design Studio in Cluj-Napoca
• 1992 — Rookie graphic designer working freelance

Cookie jar

Every young designer and art director craves for the legitimacy given by competition awards and would do anything for it: just fire up a web browser or switch on the TV and you’ll easily spot the work targeted at jury members instead of real audiences. This is the big cookie jar, and the sooner you can get your hands in it the better — it’ll save you from placing award-winning before problem-solving work later on.

I was lucky enough to get my share of awards early in my career, so I could concentrate on problem-solving work ever since. And it felt great when my serious work got awarded.

• 2007 — Distinction Award at ReBrand 100 in Rhode Island, USA
• 2007 — Held design and branding lectures in Moscow.
• 2007 — International jury member at Identity: Best of the Best 2007, 2nd edition.
• 2006 — Selected works at EULDA (European Logo Design Annual) 2006 edition.
• 2006 — Awarded Second Prize twice and nominated many times at Identity: Best of the Best 2006 in Moscow.
• 2006 — GD USA (Graphic Design USA) features in its April 2006 issue Radiocom logo in order to illustrate the latest logo design trends report written by Bill Gardner of LogoLounge.
• 2005 — Merit Award at ReBrand 100 in Rhode Island, USA.
• 2005 — International jury member at LogoLounge, 3rd edition.
• 2004 — Jury member at Internetics, the Romanian new media contest.
• 2003 — Most Beautiful Book prize awarded by the Romanian Publishers Association for Transit photography book by Cosmin Bumbut.
• 2002 — Jury member at Internetics, the Romanian new media contest.
• 2002 — Best TV Campaign award at Ad’Or Festival;
• 2002 — Best Print award at Ad’Or Festival;
• 2002 — Finalist at 3GSM World Congress advertising festival in Cannes;
• 2002 — Finalist at New York Festival;
• 2001 — Jury member at Internetics, the Romanian new media contest.
• 2001 — Nomination for The Best Campaign of the Year at Golden Drum Advertising Festival in Slovenia;
• 1999 — Best Print Ad Photo at AD Print Festival;
• 1997 — First Prize in Best Poster category at MediaFest.

I am equally happy with the prizes I’ve got together with my colleagues as a creative director, but I think that stuff is for their list of awards, not mine.

Other things

Macintosh

I switched from PC to Mac in 1996 (Macs are PCs, too, if we’re pedantic — so I should say that I switched from Windows boxes to Macs) and coming from the rough side of the barricade dragging removable media in the desktop trash bin in order to eject it in the physical world seemed toy-like stupid. No BIOS to play around with, no gazillion system settings, it was frustrating. Slowly slowly the elegance of the platform (hardware and software) grew on me and I unsuspectingly turned into a half-zealot preaching Steve Jobs’ scripture to the masses.

I soften up lately, though, but I still feel that Apple’s affinity for world-class design offers me an inspiring working environment. I still applaud, laugh and yell like crazy while watching Jobs’ keynotes and I follow rumors and analysis sites.

¹ Wikipedia’s defines KIT as “A name, either in its own right or as a nickname for the English names Christopher, Katherine, and Kittrick.” More on the subject in a past entry on the blog.