Honestly, design is only part of the job. It is also very important for the client to be a ‘good client’. What is a good client? Somebody who gives freedom and pays accordingly for time and skills.

Although my direct client was Anne Douwe Knobbe, who directed me more Frysian assignments my way, the end client was CEO Fedde Pronk, who was daring enough to have me design such eye catchers in his bank building and went along with the philosophy of the art. So Anne and i gave him this antique ‘door of perception’ that i silk printed with a message. Unfortunately i don’t have a better picture of this artwork.

So strictly speaking, this is not a painting but a silk print on an old door, but hey! there is only one exemplar and there are no copies.

Inside the 10 floor high building of Rabobank Heerenveen, i designed an ‘alternative routing’ – or perhaps it should be called ‘a routing for the mind’ connecting the content of the departments with quotes from historic people. It looked a bit like a tube way map, but with quotes where the stations would be.

Words that are there in a bigger font, are the breaking point of a sentence – and by giving it two colours i added meaning to each word. ‘Volgende’ is Dutch for ‘Next’ but if you use only the part that says ‘volg’ it means ‘to follow’. This way i tried an audience to not take the quotes for granted. For instance the quote ‘Succes is the skill to move from one failure to the next without loosing enthusiasm’ is supposed to come from Churchill, who was a war minister. Playing with the words like i seems to also makes him say ‘follow me’. Kohl’s ‘Visionaries are tomorrows realists’ gets a special emphasis on the part ‘listen’ in ‘realisten’. All was ment to keep the workers at Rabobank ‘modest’ as they were taking care of other people’s money. The modesty idea was Anne Douwe Knobbe’s, my client. Honestly, i think he was quite visionary himself.

At the end of the lines you see parts of quotes that are in complete lay out on other floors, but have a connection with the quote you can read.

This is a carpet for the meeting table of Rabobank Heerenveen. My client Anne Douwe Knobbe stressed the importance of the need for a bank to be ‘modest’ as they’re trusted with other people’s money. In this carpet lies a bit of the mutual history of Rabobank (originally a cooperative between farmers to afford costs for the community) and the ‘Grietenije’ (the Frysian bounties).

In Heerenveen, Rabobank had a CEO who wanted something else. Inspired by my client Anne Douwe Knobbe, Rabobank asked me to design carpets for 3 rooms. This is the carpet for the director’s chair.