oRIGIN sTORY

I was born in Johannesburg, S.A. and raised in The Netherlands.
After graduating graphic design college in 2009, I started working at a small design agency as the lead designer. With 3 interns to lead and a handful of clients to work for; Provincie Flevoland, Heinz, Honig, Milka, MC groep and Memorex, to name a few, I started my career as a young and ambitious creative professional. After a year and a half the company merged with a content and strategy firm, which allowed me to upgrade myself to Senior designer and junior Art Director. In this period we expanded our portfolio to not only graphic design but to developing sustainablility focused campaigns, strategies and products. The main one was branded bicycles. In this period I lead the design team and we developed, designed and produced bicycles in all shapes and sizes from the ground up. We pitched to brands, set up manufacturing and launched campaigns.

Freelance
In late 2013 I decided, it was time for me to spread my wings and go at it on my own. It was my goal here to take the time to develop myself in areas I had not gotten the chance to work in before. I did a deep dive into web design and UX/UI design, videography and photography. In the summer of 2014 myself and a couple of friends set up a music studio in Amsterdam East, which I still operate today. 2014 was a mix of design work and event planning. I organised various events in Amsterdam, ranging from Kings day stages to official Museumnacht parties to ADE events.

In 2015 and 2016 I was part of the creation of a 2 day music festival called Frank Festival. I made the art work and did the artist handling during the festival and set up a partnership between the festival and a clothing brand called Every.Day.Counts. who sponsored the crew gear.

During 2015 and 2016 I was also the Art Director and videographer for the Band SKIP&DIE. Together with CATA.PIRATA and Buzzmedia Network we created a 3 part mini documantary for the band, which was commissioned by Red Bull NL. In this period I also took the time to teach myself Cinema 4D, as I wanted a new challenge and find a new angle in my designs.

At the start of 2017 I was hired as DoP to shoot a documentary in Japan with Buzzmedia Network. We spent 2 month there, following various characters to creating a narative and tell a story. This doucmentary was nominated for Best Dutch Documentary at IDFA in 2018.

Uber
Between 2017 and 2019 I freelanced on and off for Uber and UberEats. I worked on various campaigns and assets for the EMEA and US region. Starting off there as a sub for the photography art director when he went abroad on shoots, doing QC on the images that would come in from said shoots, sending them through to be retouched and QC’d again. From there I was hired to do some motion design work and consulted on a video shoot for a global internal campaign.
After that I went on to work on some general UberEats OOH campaigns, a World Cup campaign for UberEats and the Safety campaign for Uber EMEA.
Early 2019 I was commissioned to work on a modular web design system for UberEats. We developed and designed the system for designers to be able create new web designs quick and easy within the UbeEats ecosystem. During this time I did a few smaller jobs and continued to work on my skills as an artist and musician.

Leavy
In August 2019 I got an offer to work at the marketing department of a start up called Leavy.co. The head office is based in Paris and the marketing department was based in Amsterdam. My official title was Digital Designer, but in reality I was doing everything from Art Direction to UX/UI design, paid media campaigns and video production. I worked hand in hand with the social media manager to create content and strategy. At the end of 2019 the CEO decided to centralize the marketing department in Paris and shut down the amsterdam department.

The reason I took this full time job after being self employed for so long was because over the years working solo, I came to miss being part of a team and working on something greater than myself. I have always done smaller projects with friends but nothing on such a scale for a long time. I get energy from others and feel that in a lot of cases, collaboration makes for a better result.