Hero

One of my most favorite vintage logos! Worth every euro.

Dutch Postal service's family game

The PTT used to be the Royal Dutch postal service (Posterijen, Telegrafie en Telefonie) but is now taken over by TNT. Designing for PTT used to be a huge compliment for Dutch graphic designers. Designing a stamp was the best thing that could happen in a design career.

Pins

Lots and lots of people used to collect these pins in the sixties and seventies. My parents did too. They threw out a lot of them but kept the one they liked or had memories of. At flea markets it's quite easy to find a whole bunch of these. I must admit, I always hestitate when I go past them, but I never buy them. Eventhough they look very collectible.

Travelling in and around London

London Transport has always been my fascination. Back in Art College it wrote my thesis about the London Underground; the map and the way signing. I consider the London Underground Map one of the best graphic design pieces ever and I love the London Transport corporate identity (the logo, the colours and the type face). I bought these maps and leaflets in St. Ives when we were there on holiday, a long time ago. I remember I was over the moon when I found these. They're all from the early seventies. Vintage, I'd say.

I'm Jac (Irene Jacobs) in Vancouver!

Yesterday I was searching for new input for a post about an interesting illustrator when Irene Jacobs (I'm Jac) popped into my head. Years ago I worked with her a on an assignment for a Dutch energy company. So I went over to her website and I was utterly surprised and amazed to discover that she made the beautiful illustrations and pictograms for the amazing Vancouver Olympic graphic style (in close collaboration with the Vanoc design team). Probably the whole world was aware of the fact that a Dutch girl was commissioned for this job but I only found out yesterday...
This is what the official Vancouver website says about the graphic style:

'Created in collaboration with illustrator Irene Jacobs of I’m JAC Design, the pictograms represent 19 Olympic and five Paralympic sport disciplines with a simplified silhouette while incorporating the added dynamism of the athlete in motion. The pictograms and sport illustrations were inspired by modern sport photography, pop culture, fashion illustration and manga-style comics (a Japanese genre of comic books) to give athletes an heroic feel and a close-up view of their intensity and athleticism, while also serving as an inspiration to youth.
'

The second picture is the illustration she did for Eneco, embedded in our graphic design. That was made about 10 years ago, so you can see how her work developed. She has a blog as well.

Size doesn't matter

All of the cards above a quite small. The two together are the birth announcements of both my brothers (dating back to '61 and '62). The other one is probably a bit older. It was my grandfather's business card. He was a police-inspector.

Keeping myself busy

The doodles people make during meetings always look interesting to me. I decided to use my own doodles for backgrounds etc. I used it in a design for Seyster Veste. Seyster Veste is a client of ours at Cascade, the company I work for.

Magenta rules!

I made this logo and websitedesign for a freelance office manager. Unfortunately she didn't use the design for the website. Too bad, it would have been my first website!