The habit of spreading gossip from mouth to mouth has always been part of everyday life in small towns.
In recent years, with the increasing number of people joining social networking sites and the internet
opening more channels of communication, this activity has moved online. In this context,social networks
are used in a way which makes urban gossip take even greater proportions.Sharing personal information
and experiences with a wide range of people, not only opens up the possibility for new contacts,
but sometimes leads to embarrassing and potentially problematic ends.

‘Odumki’ is the result of an eight-day experimental workshop called Gossip Week featuring a group of graphic design students from AMTII.
The focus of the workshop is the relationship between content, concept and format. Working together, the participants had to create a web
campaign and encourage the online community to share personal stories and comments. Acquiring a rich mixture of social content,
their task was to identify a common logic through which to document, edit and lay down the content in printed form.
This included the graphic implementation of visuals and text in the form of a flyer and news bulletin.

Collecting social content and using in the design of printed communication, is not only applicable to text, but could also influence the choice of visual elements and images.
Variations of this method are used in order to engage the audience as an active participant in the communication process and distribution of commercial and non-commercial messages.

The news bulletin was hand-printed in an edition of 200 on recycled paper, each with a unique serial number. Copies have been distributed in cafes and other public places in Plovdiv.

Workshop participants:
Borislava Georgieva, Veselina Koleva, Georgi Stoyanov, Dilyana Hadjiiska, Denitza Chakarova, Elena Taneva,
Elina Karadjova, Zdravka Kokalova, Iva Kmetska, Ivan Tsvetkov, Konstantina Zhekova & Lora Muhovska.

Workshop leader: Miglena Minkova & Georgi Dimitrov.

www.facebook.com/Odumki
odumki.wordpress.com

This implies a reflection on the contingencies of our world today,
and of the practices for creating, imagining,and materialising
new worlds.”(Simon, 1996 (1981) in Grand, S. & Wiedmer, M., 2010).

Based on Samgrahaniratna, a cosmic chart showing the Dvipas, this drawing tool creates ever-expanding
and playful reconstructions of the Jain ideas about the structure of the universe and physical space.

Collaboration with CreateVoice the V&A’s youth collective, 2012.

Design of printed materials and identity for BA Graphic Design Degree Show 2012.
My role included designing and coordinating the print production of the catalogue,
poster, postcards and signage.

www.thiswaynext.co.uk

Collaboration with Maria M Carrasco, Scott English, Louise Lynn & Brad Rose.
Photography: Rafael Camisassa.

A series of postcards illustrating the local google engine predictions for 166 countries which currently support google instant.

Google Instant is an optimization for the Google search engine which helps users to search as they type, giving predictions of their queries.
Initially developed as a speed search tool, it represents a mash up of popular search queries as predictions on the majority of its local
domains. The locality of the predictions given on each Google domain is calculated and measured up against a body of popular queries.
If a certain local query prevails, it is included as a prediction on the relevant domain. Also, depending on the browser settings Google
predictions could combine the popularity of personal search queries and communal ones.

The functionality to this algorithm lies at the core of this project, which aims to capture invaluable semantic knowledge extracted from
Google’s search engine. Based on the predictions derived from conjugating the verbs “to be”, “to have” and “to do” I wanted to use the
results in order to tackle the question of online identity on a more local level. By doing this I soon noticed that although some of the
predictions were the same for certain searches, others were quite ambiguous and displayed clear regional differences.

In this sense “Greetings from Google” is a convenient aggregation of up-to-date information which reflects the current interests
of particular groups of people through ephemeral snippets of information. Relevant at the present but slowly updating and sinking
into obscurity, this collection of 166 unique predictions is committed to print in the form of greeting cards, making up a temporary
and autonomous collection of search memorabilia.

A homage to Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet.

Many words are falling into oblivion whereas others are constantly acquiring new meanings.
Technology is morphing the way we use words, imposing restrictions, confining grammar
and creating generic vocabulary, which reflects our present time.

“Text Box” is a contemporary approach to the Surrealist technique of writing known as automatic writing,
which consists of producing text without being consciously aware of its content. This project uses a letter
from Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet as a starting point and employs computerized writing without any
coercion, so the process is triggered by the sound picked up from its immediate environment.

The software’s ability to interpret the sound as a word is restricted to the grammar file embedded in it, which consists of over a thousand nouns
extracted from Rilke’s original text. The match between the input and the grammar file is then displayed on the screen, continuously
reconstructing the original letter, regenerating its content and meaning while keeping its original grammatical structure.

Collaboration between Maria M Carrasco and Miglena Minkova, as a part of their graduation work from BA Graphic Design course
at Camberwell College of Arts. Built with Processing 1.5.1 & Voce: Open Source Speech Interaction Library.
Special thanks to Ed Kelly & Ivo Bichkidzhiev.

This project is a collaboration with Maria M Carrasco, in a response to an Open Archive project
set by Sigune Hamann as part of BA Graphic Design course at Camberwell College of Arts.

Taking the form of the archive as a starting point, the purpose of this publication is to map out
our brief research into the subject by referencing key works and illustrating our speculative
dialogue on the possible translations of the concept in the sphere of graphic design. We have
split the project into 3 distinct threads.

The resultant set of printed materials not only illustrate the variety of layout combinations and the plurality of readings
they could have but also serves to propose alternative orders and association methods. However, it is important for us that
despite those interruptions and visual chaos the semantic relations between all elements are preserved and could be altered
at any time. In order to develop the project beyond the print stage we have published our experiment on the web for purely
participatory reasons.

www.thisthatandtheother.org.uk

The project remains open as “a possible portal between an unfinished past and a reopened future”.
Foster, H. (2004) An Archival Impulse. October. Issue 110, pp.3–22.

This is a personal development publication which details my current research interests
and drafts the enquiry lines of my emerging practice. It sets off from my fascination
of experimental graphic design; its fluidity, production process, mutant outcomes,
multiple communication layers and complex interactions it creates.

Contextually supported by my recent dissertation work on networked processes used in graphic design, this publication traces
my attempts to practically explore different ways to co-create and extract content and meaning. Recognizing user generated
input as a main departure point for mu practice, at this stage the majority of my work samples today’s collaborative,
participatory and dynamic online environment to extract temporal traces of existence. Those often banal snippets
of information encouraged me to explore their longevity and power in relation to print. Migrating from web to print,
I am taking the chance to use this publication to synthesize my findings and transfer the conceptual ideas and processes
into practice, making the publication a project in its own right.

The publication is loosely organised into chapters which do not follow a straight line of enquiry but explore different aspects and particularities of networked processes.
The topics discussed in each chapter have emerged over time as a natural progression of my research interests and direction. Each chapter includes a research sheet
and a reflective practical experiment.

The research sheets resemble folded posters which contain imagery and text from the net mass of information resources
I have accessed; neatly referenced with a bookmark and a date stamp on Delicious.

The opening spread of each poster identifies topical keywords as well as some current meta data regarding the total number of links used.
These data parameters are constantly changing; however they give a general indication of the overall popularity of the subjects. A link to
a detailed content list could also be found at the back of the spreads. In addition, each research sheet contains some of my personal
handwritten notes in a response to the topic discussed. The default copy-paste function used for the layout of the research sheets has
resulted in the formation a visual information blobs which aptly represents the organic nature and the span of my investigation.

More refined, in-depth contextual information is given alongside my practical experiments,
which show my response to each research topic. Despite that both finished and ongoing projects
are included; all effort is made to show their potential realization through mockup visuals.

Also, three recent interviews are included in this publication to contextually supplement
it by offering the viewpoints of contemporary practitioners and theorists on the topics at hand.

Based on the metaphor of depth and span, this book presents an arbitrary selection of my current
practice and research and aims to visually narrate and reflect upon my working process.

My dissertation topic this year is focused on collaborative, dialogical and non-hierarchical design process. As a result I spent a lot of time reading
on diverse topics such as consumerism and prosumerism, database aesthetics, cybernetics, creative economy, sociology, chaos theory and system
arts. Bugged down by theory my tutors advised me to take a more hands on approach and this formed the basis of my practical research project.

I set myself the task to explore how design content could be collaborative created or derived from the Internet.
At first it seemed as a fairly straight forward task, but it really is quite challenging. Apart from the obvious
conversion of abstract to concrete and tangible, things like morals and ethics also started to creep out when
looking into the social aspect of technology and how it influences our understanding of the physical world.

Initially, I came across Miltos Manetas‘ work, which is obviously with a bit more find art context than I was aiming for,
but it sort of dwelled on exactly the topic of digital collaboration. I found his essay “Websites Are The Art Of Our Times”
truly engaging as it had a touch of Cybernetic and Randian philosophy.

“Because the Internet is not just another “media”, as the Old Media insists, but mostly a “space”, similar to the American Continent
immediately after it was discovered – anything that can be found on the Web has a physical presence.” Miltos Manetas

Printed materials and co-curation of “A Portrait of Mrs Spinks” at CCW Progression Centre 13-16 March 2012.

Collaboration with Helena Davey.