Designers in startups: the Goldilocks zone
The advent of designer Founder in startups is here. I read it, I hear about it but I don’t see it. Being in the bowels of Europe in Amsterdam’s startup scene I’ve met quite a few startups and designer founders are few and far between. There are some notable exceptions but by in large the ...
Founderfeeds: minimum viable event
Amsterdam sits in the sweet-spot of Europe and is absolutely chocked full of smart people with hot ideas. The city is the epitome of mobility whether you think of that meaning geographical location or the love of locals to use bicycles as their primary mode of transport. Yet as a startup hub in Europe it ...
Brands: You are how you are perceived
I’ll start with Social media in itself can’t build a brand. Communication has always been more personal when it’s person to person but getting brand ideals out to a larger audience takes more efficient tools. Social media is the medium of the message. The face of the message is the brand. The tools that social ...
Fall on your ass, it’s good for you
‘It’s okay to fail’ is a tenet that is popular in concept but in practice attitudes still shy away from embracing the acceptance that; in the startup world failure is more common than success and you should be open to talking about it. I feel it’s not embraced as much as it should be here ...
Imagine: Fluid behavioural mobile technology
“Technology frightens me to death. It’s designed by engineers to impress other engineers. And they always come with instruction booklets that are written by engineers for other engineers — which is why almost no technology ever works.” John Cleese Have you ever seen those shots of one guy standing still while traffics of people are ...
The monster logo
As part of the favourit team responsible for the visual, it was my charge to draw the line in the sand and state where we stood. So an identity was set into motion. First things first; the logo. Altruism was my interpret for favourit. This was what i felt should be the Arctic icebreaker attached ...
The good the bad and the employee
In the manic first year of a startup you quickly realise you need help to move forward. Being equipped with a balanced team is great but if you want to keep on iterating after your first round of designing and testing you need more hands to get the site built. We came to this epiphany ...
The beat of the tomtom
For a couple of months i worked together with the design department of Tomtom (before it’s current restructuring). It was an interesting experience to work within a large multinational and see how it run. In particular how they look at the interaction and UI design of the personal navigation devices. My contribution was to rethink ...
Fuzzle.fm start-up weekend iPad Demo
Working with a dynamicly strong team we created the brand elements, twitter/website and ipad demo during one weekend and received a very positive response to the idea and the visual interface. We are now developing the platform to be a robust music discovery engine that creates a valuable and visual experience for the user. During ...
GRI: Belief and reach
Last October I started working on the new online presence of the Global Reporting Initaitive developing visual identity which touches the area of brand building. It has been a wonderful experience working on the journey of the translation of what exists currently to where this NGO feels they want/need to be. The tone, aspiration and ...