This is a post in Braintalk

Braintalk with Alex Ionescu

1. Hi , who are you and what do you do?

My name is Alex Ionescu and I am a dentist and a designer. I own CrazyLeaf Design, a web design and development company and zaBox Business Network, a platform for business promotion. Here are 2 examples of my work:







2. Describe a typical day at work?

First of all I do design as a hobby, in my spare time. My main profession is dentistry. A typical design day … well, it depends. If I have a project I need to finish I’ll be working on it all day. I don’t like to work on a project more than 2-3 days as I simply do not have that much free time. If I don’t have a project to work on, I’m researching for articles for my design blog, maintaining my web design forum, my tutorials website, my web directory and my web gallery. Other than that I do quite a bit of researching in the design field because I always like to stay in touch with the latest trends, news and resources. At the end of the day if I have the time I’ll work a bit on my business network website, as it’s in a beta stage right now and needs tweaking till it makes final.


3. What do you enjoy most about your work?

The relaxing feeling it gives me. Some people do sports, some people do gardening, some people travel to relax. I like to design in my spare time.


4. What do you like least about your job?

Considering we are talking about my designing, I guess the only thing I don’t like is that it’s “consuming” a lot of my free time. I don’t quite have time to do other things.


5. What is your worst enemy of creativity?

The worst enemy of my creativity … hmm … that’s an interesting question. I think I’m least creative when I’m sad or bored. So my creativity depends pretty much on my mood.


6. What do you do when you start a new project and you have NO ideas?

Obviously I search for inspiration or pass the project to my associate. So far we hadn’t had a situation when both of us were blank, with no inspiration or ideas.


7. What inspires you the most?

I think I inspire the most out of magazine ads and events posters.I’m packed with glossy design, IT, games, lifestyle magazines each month and I always study the ads really closely. I often like a concept and start analyzing how the designer did that, what colours he used, how he combined them, what typeface and so on. That’s my biggest source of inspiration.


8. Do you listen to music while working? And if “yes” what music do you listen to?

Sure, I listen to music while I’m designing. Most often Prodigy, Paul Oakenfold, Paul van Dyk and Dj Tiesto. I enjoy listening to electronic music in general.


9. How do you deal with criticism?

Really good. I think criticism has an important role in your evolution as a designer. Of course, criticism from qualified persons. When I started designing, about 8 years ago I showcased a project I did on a design forum and a really good designer crushed me with his comments about that work. We had an arguement about this as back then I didn’t deal that well with criticism. The dude was nice enough to explain himself, and explain that this is the only way you can evolve, and constantly improve your skills. We remained friends till this day, and I have to say he was perfectly right.


10. What does your workspace look like?

Doesn’t look all that impressive. Sorry I’m on vacation right now and can’t provide a picture. It’s normal, with a desk with my PC, my laptop, my laserjet printer, my scanner, graphic tablet, a few framed designs I did for magazines on the walls and a LCD TV.


11. Do you remember the very first web-project in which you were involved?

The very first project I did was for my highschool. Each class had to make a website. I did it for my class. It was called x12d. This is what it look like :



12. Is there any advice you would give our readers?

Stay tunned on ShareBrain. It’s a really good website with loads of resources.


13. What has been the most fun project to work on so far?

I think the most fun I had when I did all the ad prints for a glossy lifestyle magazine, called 7 Seri. Those were some fun times.


14. Imagine yourself in 15 years… what do you see yourself doing?

In 15 years I see myself working in my own dental office and still designing and running my design blog and forum.


15. Please tell us 3 people who we should do this Interview with (Why them?).

I think you should interview Sven Lennartz and Vitaly Friedman, the owners of Smashing Magazine, in my opinion the best design resources website on the market today and Nick La a really good designer and the owner of N.Design Studio, Web Designer Wall and Best Web Gallery.


Alex, thank you for answering our questions.
If you want to visit Alex on his blog you should do this now: crazyleafdesign.com/blog