tariqsobh

A)Biography
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My full name is, Tarek Abdel-Hamid M. Sobh, I grew up in both Egypt and KSA, I spent the first twenty years of my early life between both countries, where I experienced too different but rich cultures, customs, different religious views and traditions, and where I met different kind of people from different ages and roots while living in KSA.

I was born in Damietta city in 25th of July 1977, the city of wealth and industry located in the northern east coast of the Egyptian delta, on one of two branches of the Nile river that meets with the Mediterranean sea in one of the most romantic and amazing views in the whole world, soured and sweet water meet in certain point where they need no huge dams to separate between both of them, where they live together in peace and natural harmonious without any kind of interfering from the human desire!, actually it was one of the most effective and early lessons in my whole life, the acceptance of the others and the value of harmony.

In 1986, my family moved to live In KSA instead of immigrating to western country and as kind of escaping from living in the dispirit Egypt – at this time -, I continued my education till I finished high school, over there I experienced an early feelings of homesickness, and the passion of returning back to my roots and my amazing and wonderful great family, otherwise, I learned too much over there, as I learned too much about too many cultures because of the available varieties of nationalities which we had to deal with them on daily bases, in the street, school colleagues, huge markets and mega malls and in through some other chances, also I discovered the high mountains, green valleys, disserts, high ways, the red sea and other amazing live images of the huge mother nature only when I went there, and for the first time in my whole life I watched the first live-interaction between a big group of friendly monkeys – in half a man size – and their neighbors from human being, delivering them bananas to eat!

During my long stay – with my family – in KSA, I had long spare time that I decided to invest using it efficiently, without any kind of instruction from any party, I developed many hobbies like reading, drawing & painting, photography, writing, collecting stamps, coins and currencies, correspondence with same age pen pals from all around the world and learning about computer and basics of programming since I was 10 years old.

Also, I had many fruitful activities during my intermediate and high school time, as I got used to be responsible of both fine art groups as well as IT groups for the last six years of my study in KSA, we participated in too many events that were covered by the media, the Saudi government relay encouraged its people to study and to be more creative and to develop their hidden talents through educational activities and cultural events.

I loved to read in history, Arts, religions and for sure in politics, also I experienced the second gulf war 1990 after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, and its dramatic tottering and negative effects on people who lived in this region of our dear Arabic lands.

Actually after returning back from the Arabia – my second home – I faced another obstacle which is a culture change “once more”, which last for years until I tried to recalculate – or to recover -and to understand a lot of social differences and habits.

I joined Mansoura university 1995, directly after I returned back from KSA, as I was completely obligated to inter the faculty of commerce and business administration, by my parents, who completely refused to send me abroad to study fine arts – not to live far from them – also they refused the idea of joining the faculty of fine arts in Alexandria – which I dreamed to join – because they both had horrible bad experiences while studying in it during their early days.

When I began my career – while neglecting the desire of parents – for the first time – when I became 19 years old – I started to resume series of social interactions, expanding this social network and practicing patience with various types of customers from different financial levels, at this time only, I realized that the experience I gained during my growing up period and my childhood, was extremely useful and exceptional indeed.

The most important lesson I ever learned, and I will never feel bored to mention it, that when someone love his career and feel its passion, he never fail as long as he works hard hence the huge obstacles he might face, and all types of stopping points and high thick walls he will pass by.

I began my career as a graphic & fashion designer “online freelancer”, I started with printing materials and then I moved to web graphics and animations after studying them during the period between 1998 -2000, I launched my first website at the beginning of the year 2001 and I kept it live for three years to make 86 500 unique visitors for its life cycle period, after that I was forced to closed it as I never had the time to maintain it and to update it as I kept working in it alone with no company.

From the year 2002 to 2003, I joined the AAST to study System Administration and networking, as far as I won a scholarship with no more than 120 winners out of 6000 Egyptian participated in the competitions, this scholarship was offered from the US Aid during that year.

After finishing my scholarship I moved from Alexandria to live in Cairo – the most crowded and noisy city in the world – to start a permanent career, but not in networking but in the career I dreamed of, which is Computer Graphics, it was an issue of returning to my bases! As I never thought that I will be something except an architect or a graphic designer.

I moved between more than 10 companies from all different categories you can imagine, and I had around 30 accounts as a freelancer between the year 2000 – 2008, Alhamdolelah, most of them appreciated my effort and my talent, also they respected and understood my background culture and knowledge with regards to this promising career, which was still not that well known in Egypt and the middle east countries at this time.

I remember and I noticed that some of my friends, relatives and different people I met in my life after starting up my career as a web & graphics designer, didn’t recognize my job very well, or misunderstood it, till I became a freelance art director for corporate branding project, they thought that I work for movies or video clips as long as am called an art director, but hopefully, the culture has changed rapidly during the last few years, especially after the internet services become more available and commonly in use from different categories of Arabic people so often.

B) Business Summery
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I am keen to do a high quality and unique graphics that cover the following areas:

Creative Direction

    * Professional Creative Process (Design – Consulting – Proceeding)
    * Managing the creative direction and the overall look and feel
    * Corporate branding – advertising wise
    * Corporate Identity Development
    * Interactive Media
    * Flash animations
    * Online – Offline Advertising
    * Marketing Campaigns including all known elements of marketing materials (offline-online)
    * Team development and inspiration
    * Effective brain storming sessions
    * Strong understanding of copyrights in media and creative production

Usability and User Experience Consulting

    * Ease of learning
    * Color Language
    * Prioritizing and Content Reallocation
    * Global Research bases knowledge of usability factors
    * UI object positioning and directions
    * User behaviors (especially Arab users)
    * Measuring friendly visual designs vs. user categories
    * Ease of remembering vs. non memory independent methodologies
    * Layout and interface structures
    * Navigational Structure and indicators
    * Process Simplifying (Task efficiency vs. The ease of use) of web forms and the methodology of navigational and logical concepts that stands behind user behaviors
    * Subjective satisfaction and user friendly factors
    * Response time and throughput
    * Usage of web typefaces and font styles to serve the objectives of the web content
    * The perfect use and availability of basic controls
    * Connectivity & bandwidth vs. geographical targeting
    * Browsers-compatibility
    * Usability Testing

Web Graphics

    * Corporate Websites & portals design
    * Color optimization meeting both quality and speed
    * Designing and analysis for web forms and graphical user interfaces

Web Management

    * Effective and professional Process design including and effective work flows of various types of design tasks
    * Handling and enhancing business relationships between creative department and both of business development and web development departments
    * Task distribution and team creation
    * Time management
    * Prototyping & visual design development
    * Testing

Graphics for Printed Media

    * Brand and Logo Development
    * Corporate Identity Development
    * All kinds of marketing, promotional and printing materials

Computer Illustrations

    * Comics and Character design for branding uses
    * Story Boarding
    * Abstract illustrations
    * Iconic designs for mobile web applications and tight screen resolutions
    * Islamic Arts for all uses (interior design – web design – printing)
    * Calligraphy and Typography for web and printing

You're invited to visit my personal blog:
tariqsobh.wordpress.com/

P.S.: Kindly make sure of not violating the international copyright laws while using any part of my web contents.