We always maintain
our balance.

We always
maintain
our balance.

Opinions

Show me the money!

In the movie Jerry Maguire, Tom Cruise plays a sports agent who is restarting his career based on idealistic principles […]

How important is the brief?

For a designer or brand consultant, the brief is good as long as it is short and to the point. However, when it goes […]

Domestic tourism in Romania.

Let’s do an imagination exercise and get drunk with cold water, imagining that: – The state does not give […]

Romania: What is (y)our plan?

According to Peter Drucker, whose writings have contributed to modern corporations’ philosophical and practical underpinnings […]

Country branding communication.

The communication messages about Romania initiated by the successive administrators since 1990 were punctual […]

Nation Branding. Controversies.

The most documented approaches to defining the country (or nation) brand belong to Simon Anholt and Keith Dinnie […]

Destination and image.

A destination acquires a particular image, therefore a predominantly symbolic function. If, until a certain point […]

Branding sells.

The article’s title is a truism – who doesn’t know that brands sell – but it hides some pitfalls. The first pitfall is […]

Live your potential.

Recently, I had the pleasure (really, I don’t throw words in the wind) to tell the middle and upper management […]

Designers are not complaining.

Horeca is closing again due to rising incidence of COVID 19 and everybody in the industry (incl. in Romania) is complaining. They are out of business, they […]

Romania, after

After this pandemic madness and the mask’s hysteria, the political and administrative stuttering, something should happen. Something that can […]

Put your best foot forward.

I have a problem with indecision, stuttering, avoiding responsibility, and making political decisions. Those decisions that try to hold with the hare and […]

Romania after the virus.

We have all “become aware” of the COVID 19 virus that has installed itself instantly in our lives, radically changing, overnight our perceptions and […]

A message to creatives.

This is a message to my fellow designers, strategists and creatives. Clearly, society is on the brink. Meaning that is unstable […]

Leadershit(p).

I don’t know if I am just unlucky or the surrounding world is just like it is, everywhere you turn your head. What I see is tons of so-called […]

I am…

If I were to describe myself accordingly to the new (modern, actual, now!, hip) self-appreciating titles I am a uber senior designer chief creative director […]

New people for new times

It’s far for me to deal with the politics of any party or candidate. I haven’t written about communication in politics and administration in years, as I didn’t […]

“No man was ever wise by chance”

That phrase is attributed to Seneca (Lucius Annaeus), one of the greatest Roman Stoic philosophers who, together with Marcus Aurelius […]

My chair.

I sit in my office on the same chair since ’98. It served me well for 21 years and it will probably for another few. You know, it is the classic office […]

Designing 25 years.

Instead of celebrating this month 25 years of my company with great pictures, lots of fake nice words, lots of thanks (mom&dad and pet included), a long […]

Trick or treat

We read, and we keep reading. We even share the news about the workforce crisis, that we can’t find people who are both skilled and willing to work […]

(The) Skill(z).

When I was very young and I was preparing for college I worked for two years with my teacher to get the necessary skills for admission: object and […]

U(ser) (e)X(perience).

The creative aka designer’s mind is working just the same regardless of what he/she is doing: packaging, corporate identity, UX/UI, whatever. The […]

Cheap.

Even in these times, when we’re all searching for cheap things and we surf the internet looking for the […]

Pre-packaged branding dot com

Well, that’s a long-short story. After a few meetings with startup owners, shakers and movers and receiving (almost) the same question I decided […]

Disrupting everything, now ?

Disruptive in business: Relating to or noting a new product, service, or idea that radically changes an industry or business strategy, especially […]

Clients who dare ditching the pitch

I’m a fundamentalist if it comes to pitching. It’s often the wrong process for the wrong goal. Pitches were invented to make big corporations establish long […]

Deforestation – Untold Truths

On Saturday, people took to the streets in several cities to protest against illegal logging, deforestation, the Austrian Holzindustrie Schweighofer organisation, President Johannis and many more. I also […]

Polenta Baked in the Oven

With 3 kinds of cheese and 3 whole eggs mixed in the composition. Leave it to cool and cut it into slices. You can also add a little garlic on top. And now for a little bit of advertising, the […]

What I Used to Eat When I Was a Child

I started making a list a few days ago with everything that I used to eat as a child, either made by my mom or by my grandparents. Most often by my […]

A Very Simple Explanation

A very logical explanation by Mr. Dinu about what is currently happening with the economy. In terms of marketing, branding and design domains, no one should be surprised of how they are still in the early stage of development […]

How to Not Waste Time (On a Meeting)

Willingly or unwillingly, I enter my 21st year of “minding my business”, totalling thousands of hours of presentations, meetings on projects and […]

Branzas – 21 Years

We are starting our 21th year of uninterrupted activity. As it has always and forever been the case, we are branding and design consultants.

Romanian Country Brand. Again.

Iqads honored me with a rather harsh series of questions about our as of yet unspecified country brand. We started on the premise that […]

The Red Spaniards

Ever since I travelled to Spain in 2011, I found that you can (almost) never go wrong when buying a Spanish red wine. In the month when I travelled […]

Three Words: Alex. Mușat. Blues.

Last Friday, at the first edition of Cluj Blues Fest, I attended a big day recital of a 19 year old boy. He wasn’t even on the poster, the organisers decided […]

Macovei – The Foot Point

Is it just me, or is this a “strange” coincidence? Last night I saw some videos on TV with different individuals coming in and out of the […]

Life for Via (Road) Maria Theresia

A historic road in the Călimani Mountains is being rebuilt by volunteers with their own hands. On August 16, people will run on Via Maria Theresia […]

We Dig Our Own Graves

I am writing the following as a citizen, as a parent, as a nature lover and, last but not least, as a member of the management committee of the most […]

20 Years of Branzas

We turned 18 two years ago, thus reaching adulthood, but we added to our experience in the design department in the meantime. :)) So today we are going to throw a little party. I will enjoy […]

Contract

I’ve known for a long time that design juries and competitions don’t make much sense. There is no point in explaining why, those of you who work in the […]

“Legal” Deforestation

The press and the online are filled with articles and photos of the widespread robbery that is taking place in the forests of Romania, even in reservations, national parks or […]

CSR – PR Campaign or Responsible Behaviour?

Let’s start with the definitions. CSR, which stands for Corporate Social Responsibility. I did a simple search on the internet and I typed “CSR definitions” to find […]

Sulphur as Expensive as the City of Cluj

The other day I did a “reconnaissance” hike in the Călimani Mountains on a segment of Maria Theresia Road, together with the gang from Tășu […]

Voltaire, the Sociologist

“To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid; you must also be well-mannered.”

#entrepreneurship #creativity

Oh, how much I keep up with the world by reading the news, aggregating information from Facebook […]

Kafka’s Shadow at the Bank

I recently heard the following story. I will just pass it on with a few comments here and there to simply […]

Oscar Wilde

I never liked this guy as a writer, I have no idea why. However, I found this on the cover of a book, I really liked it, so I took a picture […]

Term – Definition

The fixed date on which an obligation is fulfilled or something is done, according to an agreement, a decision or a prior requirement. In case some […]

Pro Bono or Money for the State

As some of us already know, the National Agency for Fiscal Administration “is rocking” a new visual identity as a result of an auction […]

Avram Iancu’s Airport

Breaking news: The Airport in Cluj will be called the Avram Iancu Cluj Napoca International Airport.
Avram Iancu would not have dreamed that […]

19 Years or Branding and Design

In the image below you can see a cool gift we received from our colleagues on our company’s 19-year anniversary […]

The New Public Agenda

I am beginning to notice that unorganised public opinion, made up of various kinds of NGO-type organisations, is beginning to make its voice […]

Others Also Need Special Laws

Since it is very trendy, because of “special” interest, to pass special laws that would only benefit a single company, I propose that, with the help of a law that should be enforced by the parliament immediately, without any special commissions, and written […]

Money

Some things can’t be bought with money. Obtaining certain “things” (facts, people, benefits, contracts, etc.) simply has no value due to the adverse and perverse effects resulting from the conditions set for […]

Design That Lasts

In 1958, the perfume Madame Rochas was released, the packaging of which was made by the now famous designer Pierre Dinand. At that time […]

#clujcitybreak

Thank you, Andrei Crivăț, for the invitation to participate in the debate at TIFF House on the topic of the Cluj city brand. Good initiative […]

The Blank Page of Any Designer

All creators, be they writers, artists, poets or designers, invariably begin their work with a “blank page”. It’s the nightmare […]

Dracula Reloaded, a New Leaf

For a long time, we all avoided at any cost to put Dracula in the spotlight, as a vector of […]

No Day Without Blues

I started listening to music at the age of 12-13, I have “my old man” to thank, as I was referring to him then, because he had hundreds of tape recorders […]

1% for the City’s Marketing

It’s not a rhetorical question: do cities need marketing or not? What about branding? Communication, lobby, PR!? The vast majority […]

Money for nothing…

…and checks for free. No, I’m not going to write about Dire Straits, even though I like them very much, but about how people “expect free stuff” […]

Useful / Useless Marketing

It’s an axiom, all products tend to look for ways to become brands. It’s only natural, in this way you can ask more from consumers (price), you can aspire […]

I Count My Apples Alone.

I wonder, of course rhetorically, what would happen if starting from today I wouldn’t attend to the apples from my garden each year – take notice […]

Pitch. Buget?

It is very often the case that invitations to a pitch do not contain an indication of the budget, the pre-selection of agencies being in fact made […]

I’m Honoured.

In the first part of this year, two events happened to me that have honoured and obliged me. In chronological order: Alin Uhlmann Ușeriu […]

Innovation + Brand = 90% BS

The term “innovation” has caught up with the word “brand” in terms of how popular it is and […]

The Ghost Town. A Brand.

Anyone who has wandered around in Cluj knows that in the summer the city is as quiet (or dead) as Bistrița or Zalău. The explanation is simple, the students […]

Atiya – A Beautiful Gift

As the name implies, Atiya means “present” or “gift”. Atiya is the new Home & Design product line from Becker Romania, a subsidiary of […]

Actual Training

I start from the presumption that the training of marketing executives, whether juniors or seniors, must necessarily come after a formal […]

Spa Tourism. Again???

The “new strategy” for stimulating spa tourism that is foreshadowed at the tourist product level remains the same one that we’ve been mentioning and justifying […]

A Yellow-ish-Orange Story

The story of Gălbenel (Yellow-ish, in literal English translation) is a simple one, like any story […]

I Planted…

I planted trees in Pietroasa.
Where did you plant last?

The Story of Jack-in-the-box.

In the summer of ’96 I had just finished the rebranding project of Ursus (the first one), the national launch had already been done in […]

Content vs. Exposition

About 3 years ago I was having a very heated discussion with a distinguished journalist (hello, Larisa) on marketing and economics about content versus campaign, in the context of marketing […]

There Is Another Way

In order to move directly to the subject, object, and actions – you know what they say about talking too much – each of us should realise that there […]

What Is the Correct Way to Hike?

To walk, to step, it seems like the same thing. But when you are walking on a mountain you only do it a certain way. The variables are innumerable […]

Lucky Cluj

Cluj is a really lucky city. Or it probably just got there by itself. Both of these idea […]

An Awesome Film

A handful of people, fairy-tale-like locations and heartfelt stories about mountains […]

People Will See…

“People only see what they are prepared to see.” Ralph Waldo Emerson […]

The Noises of the Forest

The other day I wandered around the mountains for a bit. At one point I was […]

After

Given that actual Roman orgies took place here, I barely managed to take any pictures, and the few I took are not even that […]

18 Years. 27th of September 1994-2012

Today we celebrate 18 years of activity. I don’t know if it’s a little or a lot!? In many ways it’s a lot. However, we believe that there is still a lot to do […]

20 Years of Vitrina

In the beginning I also worked at Vitrina for about 2 years, between ‘92 and ‘94. I was among the first, or perhaps even the first hired designer […]

The Visual Identity of a Party

Brief remarks about the logo of a new political party / alliance, the Right Romania Alliance: ARD – Acronym for the Romanian Development Agency – an institution […]

Dearly, for the students.

Every year, in May and June, I am bombarded with questionnaires, questions and requests to express my professional opinion on topics […]

Politics yet again. Communication?

It’s official, we’re in the middle of an election campaign. Messages about what candidates will do abound, as do messages about their […]

Our new website – in the making

I am writing a brief for our new website. It will be a project open to everyone who wants to participate. Coming soon, on the blog and […]

About CSR in a pragmatic way.

I don’t think anyone has any doubts about the reasons for CSR projects: to put companies and/or brands in a favourable light (and) through “social responsibility: actions. Let’s not ignore what is already obvious […]

Adventures in the online.

Neither I nor my colleagues are web design specialists. However, we are specialists in design, we have a trained eye, we have a lot of experience […]

Alien vs. Predator and vice versa.

Trademark vs brand and vice versa. Product/service vs. brand and vice versa. Brand vs. product/service. Why do I mention all these […]

The brand’s consistency.

A short story. During the five years of partnership with Interbrand, the global branding and design company, I found out and I learned […]

About published articles

It’s been fifteen years since I wrote my first “something” about branding, design and the company I run. Since then I have had the pleasure […]

Branzas for Fundatii Comunitare

Fundatii Comunitare, www.fundatiicomunitare.ro, finances projects that are useful to various communities. The organization has a national […]

We are looking for a writer

As it is well written in the title, we are looking for at least one more collaborator, a writer. Not a copywriter. We are not looking for a copywriter […]

Political. Political man.

Politics is one of my concerns only when it comes to marketing, communication and public behaviour. What I can observe is an obvious lack of structured and pragmatic thinking […]

Communication exercise: RMGC and SRM

At this specific moment (date and time) when I started writing this analysis, the petition “Let’s Save Rosia Montana” has been signed […]

No offense!

Quite often, I am struck – I think it’s the right word – by the acceptance of managers and marketing directors that, today, the online environment is all that matters, namely: To run “branding” […]

Design on shaky grounds

In a broad sense, “design on shaky grounds” happens when a valuable or growing company tries to modernize its product/service identity by resorting […]

Rebranding – mantra

For many years, branding agencies have positioned themselves in the media with their own PR, using the word/notion of […]

Brand (design) esperanto

Or how and why designers need to make some changes (and some of them even make them). Being a designer is one of the most complex, difficult […]

Austerity vs reason

A question that deserves all the attention is: “If in times of crisis or recession one of the first measures of austerity of companies is to […]

Just 6%

Once upon a time, not long ago, Romanian businesses reported, annually, extraordinary double-digit profits and growth. I heard about impressive market […]

17 years of Branzas

On September 27th, Branzas turned 17 years old. For me personally and for us, it means a lot, from the point of view of all our […]

We have no storage space!

Before 2000, Branzas participated in two competitions organized by the Romanian Foundation for Design. The awards we received […]

Is branding changing?

It’s a rhetorical question, of course, it’s changing. With the rationalization of budgets and its direct […]

Put the designers to work!

Spec work involves those practices against the ethics of the design profession that mainly include free pitches […]

About Spec Work

Spec work or speculative work is an increasingly common phenomenon that is usually manifested by the request to make a project […]

I yell, therefore I am

Due to my job, I am an avid walker among store shelves. I analyse the packaging, the brand […]

Screw-overs are getting easier and easier

The communication industry today is no exception to smaller or larger screw-overs. The funny thing is that they reach such low levels that everything […]

Who takes care of the brands?

Everyone is facing a crisis. The consumer makes savings, increases interest rates on loans, decreases sales, and the market is flooded with […]

CEC – a hybrid

I recently witnessed the relaunch of CEC under the new name of CEC Bank. Strategy or not, from the House of Savings and Consignments […]

A little less meat from now on

Not that long ago, I was writing in an editorial about the dairy industry going down vertiginously. In the meantime, I have updated my information […]

We have Gauss on sale

I think the vast majority of people know something about the Gaussian curve – that graphical […]

Ten bedtime stories

We want to be well. Immediately, effortlessly, we look for the simplest, most convenient, cheapest […]

Lard on sale

Why are Romanian cosmetic brands (brands) sold at ridiculous prices compared to the ”foreign” ones? Because they sell […]

Romania’s national brand reloaded

Infrastructure at the level of the Middle Ages. Poor or non-existent public toilets. The Dracula Hotel from Piatra Fântânele – the ultimate […]

Did the milk spoil?

My friends who work in various industries tell me that sales of consumer goods are falling. Banal. Nothing new under the sun. Let’s take a […]

Small guide for hotel management

Take a hotel from a touristic guide or from the internet. Dial the telephone number, listen to the more or less nice voice of the receptionist […]

Fitness branding

To be in perfect shape. Always. With perfect curves, small waist, long neck, upright posture, taller, freer, more beautiful. But especially to […]