me studio

the following images are merely a random selection from the past four years…. when i quit my job as creative director back in 2005 i had no idea what i was going to do next, i just knew what i wasn’t going to do… after several months working solo an old friend/designer called approached me and ‘me studio’ (martin & erik) was born on the 8th of august

we started in a tiny studio near the ‘albert cuyp’ market and after the initial euphoria of starting for yourself, we buckled down and started working on the few jobs we had and spent a lot of time looking around for work

in the following year we pitched on a number of really exciting projects (against some big agencies) and seldom won… the reality of being your own boss is a mix of small successes and an equal amount of disappointments, another day another dollar…

after a year and a half hard work erik and i found that we weren’t looking for the same things so we decided to part company and an uncertain year followed: i hadn’t realised that splitting up meant starting all over again… erik eventually moved on to join ‘total design’ as a senior designer and we are now still friends (fortunately) there is a good reason why they say ‘don’t work with your friends’

starting over however, meant that i had a chance to get new clients and reassess what i wanted, things quickly picked up again, i also finally acheived my dream of visiting tokyo/japan (amazing) and by the end of 2007 i was fully booked with new clients and doing the kinds of projects i wanted to be doing, in early 2008 i got to realise a long held ambition to design a postage stamp for example and several interesting book projects landed on my desk, it turned out to be a really busy year with new clients, new ideas and collaborations with a great deal of people who i admire… what more could you want?

well… on a more personal note, my girlfriend and i got married early one monday morning in september and the year ended on a high with the birth of our beautiful daughter ‘keet emma pyper’ as i said at the time: ‘the best design i’ve ever made’, in short it was an amazing year

the crisis has obviously affected us all in differing ways so far in 2009 although i must admit that so far it’s been another busy and fun year with a diverse and rewarding range of projects from the ‘very poorly paid but exciting’ to the ‘maybe not the most exciting thing ever but still worth doing’, i moved to a new office in the centre of amsterdam in may, did some teaching and met many new people in short i have nothing to complain about… so i’m not… the past four years have taught me an enormous amount about design, about myself and what’s important, i’ve learnt lots of new things (and forgotten even more) but more than anything the personal memories and the people around me remain the most important thing there is…

and graphic design? i still enjoy it as much now as i did over twenty years ago… lucky ‘me’