About
Dragos M.
Ristici

Dragos is a Creative Director with a passion for brand stories. Born and educated in Romania, he is currently based in Bucharest.

He was extremely lucky to witness and work on IBM's complex visual transition towards an incredibly beautiful and functional brand matrix and design system, applied across all of its' hero brands.

Dragos has worked with, or for brands like Microsoft, ING Bank, Vodafone, Edenred (Accor), GDF Suez Energy, but also with startups like Symphopay or with human rights initiatives like One World Romania.

Work
experience

IBM | Bucharest, Romania
Senior Designer (2017 - 2022)
Was part of the two most important core teams in IBM Design, the Carbon for IBM dotcom team, which supports the worldwide design effort to implement the new IBM Design Language, and the IBM Brand team, a team under the exceptional Global Creative Director Sadek Bazaraa. A huge honour was also working with a mastermind of the last thirty years of design, IBM Distinguished Designer, Mike Abbink, the creator of FF Kievit, FF Milo, Brando, or GE Inspira.

Working well as part of global teams, but also leading projects from concept to hand-over, a highly versatile background allows him to share the same language with the developers and can easily integrate in complex environments.

Blue Point IT Solutions | Bucharest, Romania
Lead Designer (2011 - 2017)
Leading the design team on main e-learning projects for clients like Microsoft, ING Bank, Edenred (Accor), Telekom, Rompetrol, and others.
Leading the effort of localising Skillsoft catalog in Romania for multi-year projects like Bizschool (OTE Academy, Romtelecom/Telekom & Blue Point trained over 9000 SME managers in a nation-wide project).

Blue Point IT Solutions | Bucharest, Romania
Sr Designer (2009 - 2011)
Responsible for updating and extending the design system and the UX framework for custom e-Learning infrastructures (LMS and courses) in a SCORM compliant environment.

UTI Systems | Nederlands & Romania
Designer (2005 - 2009)
He served as a creative designer and UI designer for various software products. He also participated and contributed in the effort of rebranding and repositioning of various software products.

Hugely passionate about the renaming process, he named a lot of products like Ectorian, Cryptora, Qualient, Cendient, Pyus, Quador, Smarture, and others. (Ex: Ectorian - the official nation-wide implemented software product that tracks and automatically processes road traffic offenses. The name comes from the association of econtra and torrens, which in latin means "against speeding".)

Abbottsfield Training | Portland, Oregon, US
Designer (2001 - 2005)
His role as a designer in a fast moving e-learning environment shifted his focus towards experimentation and embracing the trial & error process.

Building e-learning courses for giants like International Paper (over 300k employees and contractors then) shaped his inclination towards usability and improving the user experience. He learned that "more simple" is, in most cases, synonymous with "makes more sense".

Education

Faculty of Cybernetics | CSIE, ASE Bucharest, Romania
Bachelor's degree, Computer science (in progress)

Always learning in the age of AI & ML, he's pursuing a formal gap closure between design and development. Sharing the same language with developers can be decisive in complex projects.

Scrum Master | International Scrum Institute^™
Scrum Master Accredited Certification^™ (2021)

See the certificate

CALARTS (California Institute of the Arts) | Coursera
UI/UX Design specialization (in progress)

Visual Elements of User Interface Design (Michael Worthington)
UX Design Fundamentals (Michael Worthington)
Web Design: Strategy and Information Architecture (Roman Jaster)
Web Design: Wireframes to Prototypes (Roman Jaster)

IDF (Interaction Design Foundation) | Interaction Design .Org
UX Management: Strategy and Tactics (2020)

IDF (Interaction Design Foundation)
The Practical Guide to Usability (2020)

Faculty of Finance & Banking | ASE Bucharest, Romania
Finance

National College of Informatics "Tudor Vianu" | Bucharest, Romania
Informatics, Computer science

Badges | Your Acclaim
Accessibility Advocate
Enterprise Design Thinking Practitioner
IBM Agile Explorer