Beatfabriek is an Amsterdam based music school for DJ's and producers. They intent to grow into a community for music creatives focusing around the love for music and creativity more than just the technical aspects of learning how to DJ. For this purpose the company asked for a rebranding. I designed their new logo and wrote them a new brand story. I produced a brand video to launch their new brand.
Ruben is very rich in knowledge and also highly creative. Thanks to his professionalism and flexible mindset, despite Covid-19, Ruben was able to deliver a fantastic product. As an organization, we are pleased that we could provide him with the space, resources, and support to achieve this for us.
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Eric Rumkorf,
Owner Beatfabriek
Besides designing a logo I wrote a brand story for Beatfabriek that conveys their new message of love for music and creativity. Ending with the payoff: "Make beats. Play beats." To make the visual branding complete I created a style guide and provided some ideas for merchandise. Some of which have been realised.
To promote the new brand launch I produced a brand movie around the new brand story.
Different days is a music album by artists Exp., davecreates and Simeon. I designed the entire campaign concept. Including cover arts, style guide, animations and produced all the content.
Working with Ruben has been amazing to me. He’s been really good at capturing the feeling we had while making the music for the Different Days album and sharing it with the world. Something I admire in Ruben is that he is great at keeping things organized and structured in an often free creative industry. He understands my style and artistry.
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Brecht "Simeon" Visser
The album Different Days was created in a bistro between the vineyards of Verona, Italy. It's the first label project from the label Exp. Share Records. Which draws inspiration from Pokémon gameboy games. The visual concept of Different Days combines the area in which the album was created with the nostalgia of 90's Pokémon gameboy games.
The album cover and the four single covers are inspired by gameboy game loading screens. The titles are shown in an 8-bit Pokémon inspired text frame.
Where the cover arts are inspired by game loading screens, the Spotify canvases are as if you are playing the game. These animations will show up when the songs are played on Spotify. The animations feature scenes inspired by the surroundings of where the album was created and the characters are inspired by everyone who worked on the album.
The album release is accompanied by an online campaign of short for content. In the content, the artists are interviewed and tell stories about the creation process of the album.
Since the album was created in Valpolicella, a wine region, a unique wine bottle was created in collaboration with a local organic wine house. This limited wine bottle has a QR code printed on it that
gives the buyer access to a secret bonus track of the album.
To promote and celebrate the release, the album was performed in London.
Overhaus is a design and communications studio in Amsterdam. They asked me to write them a new brand story. Besides that I came up with a new story based marketing strategy and created their content.
Overhaus prides itself in creating unconventional design and campaigns. I wrote a brand story (in Dutch) to emphasise this and recorded a soundtrack to be used in their brand movie.
Overhaus wants to reach more people via their online channels. They asked me to come up with a content strategy to increase their engagement. In the past, the company has only posted announcements of work they had done in the past. I had the idea to include storytelling in their posts. Telling people how some of the iconic designs came to be, in stead of just showing the results. Animated short form video's with a voice over from the company owner tell the stories.
Exp. Share Records is an independent record label in Amsterdam. I came up with the name, designed the logo and came up with a marketing strategy for long term growth.
‘Ruben is a great producer and one of the most disciplined people I know. I love how he can dream big, think long term, be structured, yet creative. He also has a very versatile skillset ranging from video editing, story telling, music production, graphic design, webdesigner to marketing and more. Long story short, great guy and person to work with that you can rely on!’
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Pim de Jonge,
Owner Exp. Share Records
The name is inspired by the gameboy game Pokémon. In that game, there's an item that you can give to a Pokemon called Exp. Share. If a Pokemon holds that item during a battle. He shares his experience points with all the other Pokémon in the team. This way, if one Pokemon grows, they all grow. This can be a great metaphor for what the label is doing. They want to create shared experiences for artists and fans. Besides that. Both founders grew up playing the Pokemon games and their taste is heavily influenced by nostalgia. The logo design draws inspiration from the gameboy games as well.
Exp. Share grows by releasing quality music and supporting artists' visions. Exp. needs to acquire artists to release music with. One strategy to grow the network of artists is to organise yearly writing camps and then releasing and promoting the music from the camps. One other way of acquiring artists is via their Spotify playlist. Artists want their music promoted in the playlist and so relationships between the label and artists are created. The playlist grows through active promotion via ads and organic content on instagram.
The Heart is a music EP by the artist Thierry Ganz. On the EP, Thierry Ganz explores his dark side and expresses his feelings in an unfiltered way. Themes revolve around addiction to love. For the project, I created the storytelling, cover artworks, produced video content and thought out the marketing strategy.
The Heart revolves around the themes of love and addiction. For this reason we chose to use heart-shaped pills as a metaphor and iconic storytelling element. In the videos and cover artworks, Thierry Ganz escapes from his everyday struggles by ingesting the "love pills".
The Heart revolves around the themes of love and addiction. For this reason we chose to use heart-shaped pills as a metaphor and iconic storytelling element. In the videos and cover artworks, Thierry Ganz escapes from his everyday struggles by ingesting the "love pills".
The Heart revolves around the themes of love and addiction. For this reason we chose to use heart-shaped pills as a metaphor and iconic storytelling element. In the videos and cover artworks, Thierry Ganz escapes from his everyday struggles by ingesting the "love pills".
The Heart revolves around the themes of love and addiction. For this reason we chose to use heart-shaped pills as a metaphor and iconic storytelling element. In the videos and cover artworks, Thierry Ganz escapes from his everyday struggles by ingesting the "love pills".
The Heart revolves around the themes of love and addiction. For this reason we chose to use heart-shaped pills as a metaphor and iconic storytelling element. In the videos and cover artworks, Thierry Ganz escapes from his everyday struggles by ingesting the "love pills".
To promote the project, we went with a combination of storytelling video's and performance video's in which the artist performs the song to the camera.
Local Hero is a lunch restaurant in Amsterdam. With everything becoming more expensive, people are trying to save money and eat out less. This is hard on restaurant owners. Local Hero asked me to help them develop a marketing strategy and online content to attract more customers to the restaurant.
The restaurant makes a delicious special dish that changes every week. This is an excellent opportunity to create urgency for people to come to the restaurant. Every week I created a short video in which the weekly special is prepared and showcased. People started to engage with this content and show up at the restaurant to try the special before it was too late.
davecreates is a rapper and singer from London. He wanted to engage with his fans more by offering valuable content for his followers. I helped him develop a strategy for writing engaging scripts for his content and helped him with production and editing.
Working with Ruben has been a fantastic experience! He is very professional and full of innovative ideas that have significantly improved the way I look at creativity and the content we have since produced.
He understood deeply my brand values and identity - carving out a strategic plan for me to implement and grow my social presence. I’ve seen fantastic results! Ruben has created content of high value for me that has reached my audience well and achieved positive engagement.
I highly recommend using Ruben’s excellent services!
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David "davecreates" Abiona
Dave wants to inspire creative people to create as much as possible and at the same time help them discover his music. To do this we came up with a content strategy where Dave tells short stories about his creative process and the obstacles he experiences as an independent artist.
The content features Dave's voice telling the story and footage from his life and creative endeavours. Lessons he got from his experiences are highlighted.
Instrumental versions of his songs are playing in the background to link the content to his music in a non-pushy way.