Meet the 2022 Designer Dozen: Daria Kralik-Udalova

Daria Kralik-Udalova
Age: 35 | Retail Designer, Ninth Space

WHY DARIA?

From retail strategy/planning and concept design development to being a client liaison and providing construction supervision, Daria wears a lot of hats in her role. Her coworkers say she never does a “copy-paste” job when it comes to design, every project she creates is unique. Moving to Dubai, U.A.E., at 11 years old and watching the whole city being built around her as she grew up – including the construction of the Burj Khalifa building – strongly impacted her love for design. “It showed me that nothing is impossible, even when no one believes in you. You can still do it as long as you believe in yourself,” she says. Beyond her work responsibilities, Daria, who has two daughters, created an Instagram account (@dobo_kids) intended to motivate and inspire parents to play with their children through various suggested art activities, aimed at developing their creativity, knowledge and motor skills.

📷: Courtesy of Ninth Space

Describe a recent project you worked on.

About a month ago, I completed a project in Saudi Arabia. This project is a fashion brand targeting empowered women of Saudi Arabia. With recent political changes in the country, women’s lives in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia have changed … The project that I was working on is about this ‘new empowered girl,’ now she can express herself through her clothes and style. We designed the whole brand from the idea and brand strategy to the retail concept and production.

My dream project is…

…To design a flagship store for Apple.