Experience that counts

My Name is Ste­fan Sar­chadzhiev. I’m an expe­ri­enced Graph­ic Design­er & DTP Art­work­er and a film Direc­tor, Pro­duc­er & Edi­tor as well.

Let’s start with my

Personal skills 

With the work expe­ri­ence through the years I’ve devel­oped work habits and dis­ci­pline, a style of work you could say, and in the core of this style lay some very basic work prin­ci­ples that are indeed high­ly val­ued by any­one in the cre­ative and pro­duc­tion indus­try. Tech­ni­cal­ly by any indus­try in general.

I can say with con­fi­dence that I am self-moti­vat­ed, real­ly pos­i­tive and hard­work­ing. And these aren’t emp­ty words. I’m also:

• Able to deliv­er projects from idea to execution.
• Able to pro­vide a cre­ative direc­tion and take respon­si­bil­i­ty for pro­duc­ing cre­ative designs.
• Adapt­able — I have expe­ri­ence of exe­cut­ing orig­i­nal ideas with­in estab­lished brand guide­lines but I can also use my own ini­tia­tive when no guide­lines are in place.
• Able to clear­ly com­mu­ni­cate cre­ative con­cepts and ideas.
• Able to work effec­tive­ly under pres­sure and change.
• Able to remain focused and meet deadlines.

Here I’m try­ing to describe the work­ing skills I devel­oped through the years of cre­ative work. I have:

• Excel­lent col­lab­o­ra­tion, nego­ti­a­tion and prob­lem solv­ing skills.
• Excel­lent atten­tion to detail.
• Strong time man­age­ment skills — I am able to man­age shift­ing pri­or­i­ties, whilst main­tain­ing com­mit­ment to deadlines.
• Peo­ple man­age­ment experience.
• Strong com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills, a cre­ative approach and the abil­i­ty to engage with peo­ple at all levels.
• Sub­stan­tial tech­ni­cal expe­ri­ence – end to end art­work, cre­ative to print or online process. 
  • The abil­i­ty to work with tech­nol­o­gy experts to meet tech­nol­o­gy require­ments and capa­bil­i­ties as they relate to design deliverables.
  • Exten­sive expe­ri­ence in Adobe Cre­ative Suite (Pho­to­shop, InDe­sign, Illus­tra­tor, Acro­bat Pro, etc.)
  • Exten­sive expe­ri­ence with video and audio pro­duc­tion, video edit­ing and ani­ma­tion, sound edit­ing and design.

 

Here are my fields of exper­tise:

Graphic Design and DTP

With more than 20 years of expe­ri­ence on the field of graph­ic design, DTP and art­work­ing as a free­lance and in-house graph­ic design­er, through the years I’ve had a chance to work for var­i­ous clients on var­i­ous design fields and numer­ous projects, prepar­ing cre­ative con­cepts and deliv­er­ing final prod­ucts for:

• adver­tis­ing agen­cies — ABL & BTL, B2C and B2B mate­ri­als, press, web and out­door adver­tise­ments, brochures and leaflets, cor­po­rate iden­ti­ty and more.
• pub­lish­ing hous­es — books — cov­ers and bod­ies design, mag­a­zines and newsletters
• online and web: Flash appli­ca­tions, ban­ners and web page con­tents; Web pages, FB and oth­er social media appli­ca­tions; UI and app design; CMS.

The knowl­edge of the entire cre­ative and pro­duc­tion work­flow — from the client brief to the deliv­ery of the final prod­uct — print­ed or online (includ­ing close work­ing with the print­ers and always over­see­ing the print process) — gives me and my clients the abil­i­ty of choice by offer­ing them dif­fer­ent cre­ative solu­tions often beyond the ini­tial brief para­me­ters to choose from; flex­i­bil­i­ty — “on the fly” prob­lems solu­tion and cre­ative and con­cept changes; and most impor­tant — con­fi­dence that the high qual­i­ty work will be always done on time and on price.

Video production

From cor­po­rate videos and pre­sen­ta­tions to short exper­i­men­tal fic­tion movies. 

Being a grad­u­at­ed film and TV direc­tor and cer­ti­fied VXF com­pos­er and edi­tor, with more than 2000 hours of TV pro­duc­tion, doc­u­men­tary, short fic­tion and ani­mat­ed movies under my belt, my skills and expe­ri­ence allow me to:

• deal with the pre-production:
  • writ­ing scripts (also edit­ing & tweak­ing scripts that have been already writ­ten) not only for fic­tion movies but for every­thing that needs to be shot on film or video;
  • pro­duc­ing, plan­ning, bud­get­ing and organ­is­ing the pro­duc­tion — gath­er­ing crew and cast, deal­ing with contractors;
  • pro­duc­tion design and cre­ative planning.
• deal with the production:
  • direct­ing and shoot­ing the movie;
  • assum­ing the role of a pro­duc­ing direc­tor by organ­is­ing and super­vis­ing the entire pro­duc­tion & shoot­ing stage.
• deal with the post-production:
  • edit­ing the footage by myself from the raw mate­r­i­al to the final prod­uct (that includes adding CGI effects, motion graph­ics, VFX, subtitles);
  • deliv­er­ing the final prod­uct — DVD author­ing, prepar­ing DV and full HD for­mats for TV broad­cast­ing, prepar­ing DCP (dig­i­tal cam­era pack­age) for dig­i­tal screen­ing, con­vert­ing to var­i­ous for­mats for online dis­tri­b­u­tion and streaming;
  • or cre­ative super­vis­ing a post contractor.

When some­thing needs to be shot on video or film my knowl­edge and expe­ri­ence give me the abil­i­ty to work with con­fi­dence on the entire project — from the client idea and brief, to the deliv­ery of the final product.