Drugi jezik na kojem je dostupan ovaj članak: Bosnian
By: Ekrem Dupanović
Vedrana, Filip, Amir and I arrived in Zagreb on Sunday evening. Waiting for me at the reception desk of the Hotel Sheraton were five copies of the book The Best of Adriatic Creative Directors, left there for me by Mirko Koren from the printing house Printera. The yearning had come to an end. I finally have the book in my hands. Cover looks great, but I dare not immediately open the inside pages. In the latest version, which Žare Kerin sent to me in pdf, I saw a few pages with large black areas, and I’m afraid of black color in the press. No one has ever printed them well. They are always some shades of gray – and it’s an ugly hue of gray. I sat in the cafe in the lobby, ordered a coffee, and slowly, with fear, I opened the book. Fantastic print. Black, as I had never seen before. You have to work with the real printers, which Printera really is. Žare has done an excellent design, Printera masterfully printed it, so my text, my stories about the 26 creative directors, fall into the background. I laid down quite late, because I went through the book, page by page, at least ten times. All the hard work has paid off.
It’s Monday morning. I get up early. Zagreb is shrouded in fog. It’s cold as the freezing rain falls. It’s one of those days to spend in bed. I go to St. Sunday, twenty kilometers away from the city center to thank Mirko Koren and Mario Cvitković for their outstanding job. At the printing house I also receive a copy of the book No Friends, No Brands, by Mitja Tuškej, which I translated from Slovenian, and whose regional edition is published by Media Marketing. This book also looks great, and I look forward to the afternoon when I would promote it along with the book The Best. Mitja will come to the promotion, which is scheduled for 16.00h in the restaurant Lobby.
We came back to Zagreb around noon. I go to the bookstore to buy a gold felt-tip pen with which to write the dedication on the black background of the book, for some of the most important people to me. I sit in the lobby of the Sheraton and write the first one. You know for whom – Iva Balent. The second book goes to my dear long-time friend Ksenija Renko who injured her leg and canceled the early morning flight to Prague. This trip to Prague was very important to her in terms of business, but she could not travel. That’s why Vedrana and I sat in a taxi and went to visit. I brought her the book. She was very happy with it. We drank champagne, ate great Christmas cakes and met Nera, Ksenija’s beautiful daughter.
From Ksenija’s place we go to the promotion in the Lobby. Everything is ready. Now only the friends that I had invited have to come. And they came. First came the folks from Ljubljana. Aljoša Bagola and Blaž Vuk. Then Žare Kerin, Marko Vičić and Ana Por. Žare called me in the morning to ask if I had seen the book and how it looks. He was also very anxious to see it because, as he told me at the promotion, he also wanted it to be a great book. And it is! Then arrived Lea Riđan, Marina Bolanča, Kamilo Antolović, Mario Fraculj, Davor Bruketa, Jelena Mihelčić, Marina and Slaven Fischer, Damir Ciglar, Darko Bosnar, Igor Mladinović, Vanja Blumenšajn, Jelena Fiškuš, Sean Poropat, Kristina Ercegović, Davorka and Nino Verber, Mario Cvitković, Mirko Koren … everyone I wanted to see today. The promotion was led by my friend, journalist Rene Bakalović. In addition to me, Žare also talked about the book The Best of Adriatic Creative Directors, followed by me again, together with Mitja, to present his book No Friends, No Brands.
Comments were great. I wrote dozens of dedications, which was no small task as each message needed to be personalized. For each and every one I needed to write something that related to them personally. But I was on a roll.
Two hours of mingling with dear friends went by in a flash. Although we had planned to return to Sarajevo immediately after the promotion, we went back to Sheraton to take the rooms again. We are tired, and there’s no need to drive in this weather back to Sarajevo. A crazy idea came to my mind – to go to the printing house in the morning and take the books, and then to first go to Belgrade, and then to Sarajevo. Again the yearning to give the book as soon as possible to my friends in Belgrade as well. We’ll see. Morning is wiser than the night.
