[last time updated: december 2018]

Hi there! My full name is Ștefan-Eduard Bulai and I’m a young creative and knowledge-hunger guy. My aim is to design mobile and web solutions for businesses in just a few days while my approach is simple and is based on simplicity, user-centering, and business empowering.

I can advise you on the key objectives that should be set in order to translate the mobile app or website in an investment instead of an expense. It should not even be the other way around.

The technologies and platforms I use sums up a broad list but usually, it shorts up to Figma, WordPress or Webflow, WooCommerce or Shopify and Google Firebase. I always look up for easy-to-understand platforms and technologies in order to keep things tidy and clean for you so that the power will be in your hand if you want to. I also believe that digital solutions should be based on powerful technologies whose end we would not be able to see.

Looking into the past, I developed my interest in the world of digital when I was just 13 years old by creating different artworks for friends, for some gaming forums or even youtube thumbnails for videos or vlogs I and my friends were doing haha. However, things got serious when I started to prefer working and learning things and techniques in photoshop instead of doing my school homework so I thought, why not keep things professional and follow this career path? I enjoy it and it seems to evolve day by day.

In the last 3 years, I decided to step up things from being a graphic designer to being a web designer. It wasn’t easy but, as some people say (and other doesn’t, who am I to contradict?) a designer should know how to code and this journey was not easy, but for sure was one of the most interesting and self-developing experiences I’ve had, and still have.

In 2017 someone approached me, someone that became a mentor for me for a few months. He gave me the opportunity to enroll in a User Experience course that didn’t broad my horizon, it showed me a whole new one. This was the “thing” that turned me from a designer to a solution provider. Till then, I thought that web & mobile design is all about nice colors, good typography, and aesthetics. Spoiler alert: it is not! 🙂

Besides the design side of me, I love traveling and volunteering for environmental and educational causes but also for different festivals (musical or design). After a lot of experiences as a volunteer, I decided to settle down in an NGO team in my city: es-sphere’s team. But as the apple does not fall far from the tree, I became a volunteer in the marketing department: a web & design member. I was in charge of the website and design materials (facebook posts, print materials, projects’ brands, etc). In this journey I was not happy with “just” that, so I took two important decisions that took me where I am today.
First one, I decided to become a project manager, I wanted to see how it’s to be a leader and to manage a team, grow a project, seek sponsorships, keep in touch with vendors, trainers, speaker, how it is to do a budget and a cashflow, and many more things. It was an amazing experience, that amazing that I did it twice! Here are the 2 projects I managed: YESS (in 2017) and INVEST (in 2018). INVEST was a new project, as against YESS who already had 4 successful editions until I tried my luck as a project manager. INVEST is a project about financial education for teenagers that also taught me a lot about this aspect but especially about leadership since, for me, the first experience could’ve been improved.
The second: I took the role of Marketing Department Manager. I had a vision for this NGO’s awareness in the local community. I had a vision about improvements and especially innovations in our workflow. It was the fact that I brought some impact on TEDxGalatiED 2017 that showed es-sphere’s management team that I’m ready to take that role. It was an amazing experience which taught me a lot about marketing and sales, a lot about how to handle stress and burn-out. I can’t recommend it more haha!

Guess what happened next? I’m glad and more than fulfilled to say that, because of all I’ve done in this NGO, now it lives in the hands of me and another two colleagues. We took the lead of the NGO in August 2018 and since then we learn a lot of new, intriguing things every day. It’s also a challenging experience since our “workforce” is a team of ~70 teenagers between 14 and 19 years old. It’s not that easy to work with teens, but it’s worth it!

Coming back to the roots, since 2018 I joined Woobble’s team and we’re working on digital solutions for a broad range of businesses. Besides that, I still enjoy working as a freelancer on projects linked to education, festivals, digitalization, environment, artists and IT. But who knows, surprise me with something new!