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Riccardo Colombini
Mobile: (+352) 621635093
1, Am Gronn
L - 5222 Sandweiler
E-mail: colori@internet.lu
Graphic Portfolio (Dropbox)
LinkedIn
Last update: 14/11/2016
Profile
∎ Italian nationality, 48 years old. After graduating in Political Sciences with specializa-
tion in Sociological subjects (Communications, Social Psychology, General Psychology, Cul-
tural Anthropology, etc.) I have been working in the multicultural and multilingual environ-
ment of the European Union Institutions where, highly motivated to be a leading actor of the
new world of the Internet and experiment its new opportunities of creative expression, since
1999 I have progressively developed a real expertise in visual communication. Over time, I
have been able to work and act as Web Developer and Graphic Designer, Art Director, IT
Project Manager and UI/UX Designer. In my view, User Experience Design is a highly multi-
disciplinary field, incorporating aspects of psychology, anthropology, sociology, computer
science, graphic design, cognitive science and business. My assets:
▶ Creative thinking, pedagogical attitude, ability to present and argue my graphic proposals.
▶ Ability to interpret and guide clients requests and translate them in visual identities following the UI/UX
design process and accordingly to the Web-multimedia standards and/or the print technical constraints.
▶ Expertise in Multimedia/IT Project Management and Quality Assurance and Control.
▶ Extensive general culture with a special personal attitude for communication, marketing and advertising.
Work experience
16 Mars 2004
31 December
2016
∎ Graphic/Web-UI-UX Designer, Art Director, Project Manager at the Directorate
for Innovation and Technological Support, European Parliament, Luxembourg.
▶ Recent main achievements:
• Delivery of the interface mock-ups and Cascade Styles Sheets specifications for Fluid +, an appli-
cation of the Directorate of Translation for external contracts management running on Microsoft
Sharepoint. Acting at once as UX Designer and Project Manager with a panel of 10 persons from
the client-side (Head of Unit, developers, users’ group), my working method was based on design
process principles such as collecting information about the problem with frequent meetings and
phone contacts, understanding the users’ goals, creating and refining wireframes and designing a
few mock-ups versions until the final acceptance. As a result of the excellent cooperative atmos-
phere the client recommended my skills to another Unit of the Directorate of Translation for the re-
looking of another application.
• Delivery of an Intranet single page mock-up learn.EP as the starting point for accessing all the train-
ing courses managed by the Directorate for Personnel. The design process started by analyzing
the client’s needs, structuring and labeling the different categories and producing a few wireframes
in order to verify the logic and effectiveness of the collected information. Once agreed, I create sev-
eral graphic proposals until the final client’s choice. 6 months after its online publication, I was re-
quested to create another mock-up, based on the same look and feel, exclusively targeted on the
training courses needs of the European parliamentary members and their assistants.
• Other recent applications mock-ups already implemented by developers are Memorie (Manage-
ment Monitoring Reporting) for the Directorate for Information Offices and Courrier du citoyen for
the management of the European citizens mails.
• For a view of some mock-up samples cited above:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/wcz8k1phnona7tl/AAA8RzeQR063IxQKAhjLSwFQa?dl=0.
▶ Generally speaking, from 2010 until today, my daily work focuses on creating cross-media visual identi-
ties: not only mock-ups for Intranet sites and related graphics such as After Effects animations, advertise-
ments, splash-pages, banners and so on, but also logotypes, desktop wallpapers and icons, Christmas
cards, posters, newsletters lay-outs, templates Word, Powerpoint and Acrobat, etc.
▶ Until 2010, as Art Director I’ve been responsible for the graphic design of the new Intranet of the Europe-
an Parliament: design implementation and Cascade Styles Sheets encoding in a Tableless lay-out ap-
proach; drafting of technical specifications for the use of Cascades Styles Sheets and the compliance with
the World Wide Web Consortium and Web Accessibility Initiative recommendations.

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▶ Until 2008, development (XHTML, Cascade Styles Sheets, working knowledge of Javascript) and Web
design (mock-ups, images, icons) for the European Parliament Web site Europarl, evolutive and corrective
maintenance, daily content updates, quality assurance and control at both technological and editorial levels,
expertise in multilingual issues.
▶ Training Courses (Advanced): After Effects, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Flash, Final Cut Studio, IT
Project Management.
▶ Technologies watch: Sitepoint and UXPin books, Smashing Magazine, Webdesigner Depot, Webdesign-
er News, others.
16 August 2002
29 February 2004
∎ Multimedia Project manager at the Multimedia Publications Unit, Office for Official Publi-
cations of the European Communities, Luxembourg.
▶ Project management (Web sites, CD-ROM and videos) from the starting order form to the final quality
acceptance.
▶ Quality Assurance and Control at both technological and editorial levels, Ergonomics, Information Archi-
tecture, User-friendliness, Effectiveness, Usability, W3C standards (World Wide Web Consortium); WAI
(Web Accessibility Initiative), IPG (Information Providers Guide) of the European Commission web site EU-
ROPA, multilingual issues, other standards.
▶ Training course The art of project management for IT/IS Projects.
1 June 2001
31 May 2002
∎ Intranet Project manager and Designer at the European Court of Justice, Luxem-
bourg.
▶ Project manager in charge of the Intranet renewal plan at the Directorate for Translation (450 civil serv-
ants, 11 linguistic Divisions).
▶ Analysis of existing content and staff needs, conceiving a new Intranet project aimed to promote users’
communication, cooperation and productivity.
▶ Conceiving and developing a brand-new Intranet: lay-out, Cascade Styles Sheets, HTML, DHTML, Ja-
vascript, Ms-Access database, templates and libraries Dreamweaver 4.
▶ Conceiving and developing a brand-new Intranet information architecture as well as a new content hierar-
chy; content management, maintenance and updates.
▶ Managing, coordinating and training 22 collaborators (Dreamweaver and Intranet publishing).
▶ Drafting of technical specifications: Iris: L'Intranet de la Direction de la Traduction, et Guide à l'utilisation
de Macromedia Dreamweaver 4.0.
▶ Interinstitutional training course "Gestion de projets", participation in the conference "Veille
technolinguistique 2001 et Stratégies de recherche Internet".
▶ Research and analysis, documentation, copy-writing, processing and formatting documents for print
publication.
▶ Creating new document templates (notes, reports, communications) for internal and external use (inter
European Institutions).
1 Mars 2001
31 May 2001
∎ Multimedia Project manager at the Multimedia Publications Unit, Office for Official Publi-
cations of the European Communities, Luxembourg (See above).
14 February 2000
28 February 2001
∎ Helpdesk at the Computer and New Technologies Division, European Court of Justice, Lux-
embourg.
▶ Helpdesk for Corel WordPerfect Office 2000, Microsoft Office 97 and 2000, HTML conversion and format-
ting.
▶ Participating actively in developing problem solving methods, co-operating at the creation of the new
Helpdesk service in a team of 4 persons.
▶ Conceiving and developing an Intranet site project "Word Perfect Office 2000 Helpdesk" with a dynamic
updating system and data indexation based on MS Access, Visual C, Javascript, HTML and Cascades
Styles Sheets.
▶ Expertise in multilingual format issues and files conversion (Word Perfect, Word, HTML, PDF), pro-
cessing and formatting documents for print publication.
▶ Helpdesk Specialist Certification "Word Perfect Office 2000 Helpdesk Professional" by "Corel Profession-
al Services".

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4 January 1999
13 February 2000
∎ Web Developer & Designer for the European Parliament Web site EUROPARL at the In-
ternet Edition Unit, Directorate for Edition and Distribution, European Parliament, Luxembourg.
▶ Creating, optimizing and updating Web content of the European Parliament Web site EUROPARL.
▶ Technological research and analysis, proposing innovation in order to improve the productivity of the
service, for instance by launching the use of Cascade Style Sheets and new software (Macromedia
Dreamweaver 1.0 and Homesite), developing new Javascript features.
▶ Helping colleagues to adopt the new software (installation, configuration and updating).
▶ Proposing templates to optimize new content development.
▶ Developing the new management system of the EUROPARL Web site Index (MS Access + Visual C
database application and Macromedia Dreamweaver 1.0)
September 1998
January 1999
∎ Copy-writer for the editing project The Euro-Mediterranean Partnership leaded by an Italian
member of the European Parliament, Brussels.
September 1997
January 1999
∎ Translator free-lance (FR, EN > IT). From July 1998, Sworn translator of the Court of First
Instance of Metz (France).
1 December 1997
31 Mars 1998
∎ Proofreader at the Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, Luxembourg.
October 1995
May 1996
∎ Consultant (Research and copy-writing) for the Division of Political and Institutional Affairs at
the Directorate-General for Research, European Parliament, Luxembourg.
▶ Copy-writing, research and documentation on social, economical and political subjects, European and
international affairs.
▶ Processing and formatting documents for print publication. Conceiving a new document template for pub-
lication of the European Parliament Technical and Thematic Notes (With Corel WordPerfect 5.1 running in
MS-DOS).
MULtimedia Design
∎ Adobe Creative Suite CS6-CC: (Illustrator, Fireworks, Photoshop, After Effects, Premiere,
Dreamweaver, InDesign), Steinberg Cubase 8.5.
▶ XHTML, HTML, XML, XSLT, Cascade Styles Sheets, Javascript.
▶ Quality Assurance and Control at both technological and editorial levels: Visual Design, Information archi-
tecture, Structuring-organization-labeling, Findability, Interaction Design, Usability, User-friendliness, Effec-
tiveness, Accessibility, Human-computer interaction, Ergonomics, Responsive design, Writing for the Web.
▶ MS-Office, Adobe Acrobat.
Studies
1995 ∎ Graduate in Political Sciences at Pisa University, Italy, with an average of 108/110.
▶ Specialisation in Social Sciences (Sociology of Communications, Social Psychology, General Psycholo-
gy, others).
▶ Thesis of Bachelor: L’affaire Edgar Morin. Lecture dialogique, récursive et hologrammatique de l'œuvre
morinienne et relèvement de trois catégories centrales: Subjectivité, imaginaire, bio-anthropo-sociologie
(407 pages, 1995).
1985 ∎ High School Diploma in scientific subjects at Carlo Cattaneo Institute, Follonica, Italy.
Languages
IT ∎ Mother tongue.
FR ∎ Speak read and write fluently.
▶ 1992-2016: Residence in France (Metz) and Luxembourg.

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EN ∎ Speak read and write.
Aptitudes
∎ Intellectual agility and creative thinking.
∎ Ability to solve problems and to optimise work procedures, particularly in Web publishing
and computer related fields.
∎ Interpersonal sensitivity and a flair for communication.
∎ Ability to work independently as well as a member of a team.
Publications
European
Parliament
▶ "The Euro-Mediterranean Policy of the Union: Assessment and Outlook", ELDR - European
Liberal, Democrat and Reform Party, 1999.
▶ “De la Bibliothèque traditionnelle au Centre d’Information multimédia: nouvelles oppor-
tunités pour l’intégration européenne”, 1997.
▶ Notes on the political situation in "Italy", "South Africa", "Japan", "Lebanon", "Jordan",
"Syria", 1995-96.
▶ Other documents: "The salaries of European Members of Parliament in the European Un-
ion", "The relationships between the European Parliament and national parliaments", "The
Mediterranean countries - Maghreb, Machrek", 1996.
European Court
of Justice
▶ Iris, L'Intranet de la Direction de la Traduction (technical specifications) (2002)
▶ Guide à l'utilisation de Macromedia Dreamweaver 4.0 (2002)