Jeroen van Erp
(Creative Director; Fabrique Communication and Design)
Jeroen van Erp graduated from the Faculty of Industrial Design at the Technical University of Delft in 1988. After graduation he started as a freelance designer and clients at that time included ING Bank and the Dutch Postal Service. In 1992, he was one of the founders of Fabrique in Delft, which positioned itself as a multidisciplinary design bureau. He established the interactive media department in 1994, focusing primarily on developing websites for the World Wide Web - brand new at that time. The high level of experience gained in the area of graphic design, in combination with a curiosity about complex information flows and engineering, have contributed towards establishing Fabrique as one of the leading bureaus in the field of interactive media.
Under Jeroen's joint leadership, Fabrique has grown through the years into a multifaceted design bureau. It currently employs more than 85 staff for a wide range of customers: from supermarket chain Albert Heijn to the Rijksmuseum, from the Lower House of Parliament to Artis Zoo.
Fabrique develops visions, helps its clients think about strategies, branding and innovation and realises designs. Preferably cutting straight through the design disciplines, so that the traditional borders between graphic design, industrial design, spatial design and interactive media are sometimes barely recognisable. But always with a primary focus on good design. In the bureau's vision, this will be the only way to create apparently simple solutions for complex and relevant issues in future.
In recent years, the bureau has won more than 100 prizes and nominations in the Netherlands and abroad. The bureau also opened offices in Amsterdam in February this year.
Jeroen is currently a partner and creative director, and in this role he is responsible for the creative policy. He has also been closely involved in various projects as art director and designer, including ones for the Rijksmuseum, Dutch Railways and the Directorate-General for Public Works and Water Management. He is a guest lecturer for various courses and is a board member at NAGO (the Netherlands Graphic Design Archive) and the Design & Emotion Society.
Talk abstract:
Design will never be the same...
About design and the past. About design and the future. And what design will be, should be, has to be, wants to be. About context and content, aesthetics and effect, Jobs and Ive, thinkers and doers, dreamers and realists, love and ugliness, initiators and followers, politicians and consultants and creating the difference. It will deal with the semantic discussian about the meaning of design. Whether it's possible to come up with new connotations or do we have to 'design' a new word? Or can we do without design?
This talk is definitely not about defending the starstatus of the designer, not about Newson, Jongerius, Wanders, Hadid, Eek, Sagmeister, Saville, Pininfarina or even Thonik, Dumbar or good old Wim Crouwel. It brings back thoughts of Gilles Deleuze (and his mate Felix Guattari). It will put their rhizome theory in a new perspective, making a designer of a philosopher or the other way around. It won't get easier but for sure more interesting. Let's talk about it or better (?) let's vote!
Maybe we agree on trying to do it differently from now on... Maybe not.
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(c) 2007 Mastermundo.org / Royal Academy of Art [KABK]
