I’m a third-year Multimedia & Graphic Design student at TEPAK (Cyprus University of Technology). The campus is in my home city, downtown Limassol — one floor, every workshop a walking distance from the next. Here’s what a real Year 3 day actually looks like.

The morning

Alarm at 8. I lie. Alarm at 8:30. I lie again. By 9 I’m grabbing an energy drink downtown and walking to class. (Half English, only tea or Red Bull, no coffee in this house — but the Red Bull is for emergencies and Year 3 is one long emergency.)

Class

I sit down, wait for my friends to show up, open the laptop, look at the assignments on Moodle and contemplate my life. Sounds dramatic. It’s accurate.

The professors

Two shout-outs while I’m here. Keti Mavri (web development) basically taught me half of what I know about actually building websites — yes, this portfolio you’re reading exists partly because of her class. And Lazaros Kouzelis (3D games), who pulled me into the parts of 3D I’d otherwise have run from.

The hangout

We mostly end up at Colibri (it’s literally one of the classes) or on a bench behind the studios. That bench has seen more half-baked brainstorming than it deserves.

When the brain is fried

At some point my brain hits a wall. I stop, go home for a proper break, then come back — or head straight to Sneaker 10 until 8:30 or 9 at night. Either way the day’s not done.

What nobody tells you about Year 3

It goes terrifyingly fast. I didn’t realise how fast until the end of the year — when one of my closest friends graduated and I had to actually sit with the fact that next year, he won’t be in the studio anymore. No more him sitting next to me, looking at my project, asking “how did you even get into uni?” with a straight face. No more him pissing me off in the way only he could. And no more him telling me when something I’d made was actually good — and meaning it. That’s when it hit me. Year 3 isn’t really about the grades. It’s about the people you’re doing it next to.

Why TEPAK

It’s in my home city, it’s a free university, and it had exactly what I wanted to study. As much as I’d love to live by myself in another country, I don’t think it’s time yet. There will be a day I leave — but as my dad says, “Όλα με την ώρα τους.” Everything in its time.

Sneaker 10, Limassol. I started as a sales assistant — the lowest tier of “anyone can do this.” By September 2025, the entire management team and the sales team had walked out. Like, literally, all of them. Same week. Goodbye and good luck. I was suddenly running a store doing 5,000 customers a day, with two people, in the middle of my third-year university exams.

Most people would have quit. I am stubborn. (Also, broke.) So I stayed.

The long, slightly cursed months

For about six months I trained the new hires, handled every customer complaint, opened the store, closed the store, restocked, kept the floor moving, and somehow showed up to my finals. My grades that semester are not the brag of the year. My patience-bank, however, will outlast me.

I also drank an unreasonable amount of Red Bull. (Still waiting on that sponsorship.)

What I earned

The supervisor title wasn’t handed to me — I earned it the slow, slightly humiliating way, by doing the impossible and not making a scene about it. Bonus prizes: respect, knowledge, leadership instinct, and a borderline unreasonable amount of caffeine tolerance.

The team now

About 12 of us on the floor. They make jokes I’m not allowed to repeat on a portfolio site, they have my back, they feel like family. After a year of being alone in chaos, walking into a shift where everyone knows your coffee order (or, in my case, your Red Bull preference) is a whole different kind of happy.

Visual merchandising — the part I actually love

Once I became supervisor, the displays became mine too. Visual merchandising is basically retail with a vibe. Three seconds to make someone stop walking. Two more to make them care. I do most of the windows and a lot of the floor displays. There’s no studio, no brief deck, no Pinterest board. Just: here’s what needs to move this week, here’s a vibe, see you in three hours.

The window matters most. People walking past have maybe three seconds to decide whether to come in — so the window has to do one thing really well. One focal point (a red jersey, a bright sneaker, a shopping bag glowing under neon) and everything else gently supporting it. If two things compete, nothing wins. I learned that the hard way around month two.

Mannequin therapy

Mannequins are honestly my favourite part. A Spain jersey worn wrong-way around the torso. A snake-print skirt. A balaclava-meets-headband thing I improvised one Friday because I was bored. The trick isn’t selling the literal outfit — nobody buys what’s on the mannequin. What they buy is the feeling the mannequin gave them about the store.

Wall displays are where I get nerdy. Colour first, silhouette second, brand third. Yellow tape and our own paper bags became a recurring graphic element across every window — repetition makes a store look like it knows what it’s doing.

What it taught me as a designer

Retail teaches you things designers usually miss. How a customer actually moves through a space. What stops their eye. Why a clean display feels expensive and a messy one feels cheap. Every shift is a free observational research session — and I get paid for it.

You can’t ctrl-Z a wall, so you learn to plan or you learn to suffer. And a brand isn’t a logo. It’s the feeling someone gets when they walk past a window. I think about that a lot.

Coffee or tea?

Half English, so it’s tea, always. Not a coffee girl. Honestly though — I’d marry a Red Bull. (Red Bull or Shark, sponsor me please, I’m not joking.)

The album on repeat?

The Weeknd’s Trilogy, on a loop that’s lasted years — I’m a huge Weeknd fan. Travis Scott, Don Toliver, and Kali Uchis on rotation around it.

Dream client?

A small editorial title that treats type like personality — Apartamento, Eye Magazine, anything with that kind of patience. Or a streetwear/lifestyle brand that doesn’t reduce design to a logo drop — Aimé Leon Dore would be a dream. Honestly though, the best client is anyone who lets me sit with a project long enough to do it right.

One design rule you’d frame on a wall?

“Cut, don’t add.” If something feels off, the answer is almost never more — it’s less.

Best advice you’ve gotten?

“Keep moving. It’s not your business what everyone else is doing — just keep going and getting better, as much as you can.” Stuck with me ever since.

What do you do when you’re stuck?

Two things. One — I ask someone who knows nothing about what I’m working on to react to two different ideas. Whichever one they latch onto first usually wins. Two — I leave the project completely. Cycle through my Spotify playlists, do something different for a bit, then come back with a clear head. Almost always works.