Okay people, this is old news. Somewhere in the ’90s – the ‘pre-everything era’ I was asked to make so called ‘Bumpers’ in a TV program. This was a program about movies and directors and the short animations were to make cool transitions between items. Its shot on video and I asked my friend Roelof de Groot – so we could do this together. Every 2 weeks, a new bumper was needed. We spent most of our time working hard without getting much sleep in between episodes. We also did the music, by the way.

There is a story behind this picture. A very long time ago, when i was only just graduated from art school, the director of this program Stardust, asked me to make a logo resembling the ‘Stardust’ logo from Las Vegas. So i designed an alphabet in which the titles of the program were made and this logo, that obviously heavily leans on an original.

Yet there was more: when Ir. Vendermeulen started a club night with the same name they just copied the logo and made this lamp from it. I found out when the lamp was actually in use, never knew they had stolen the design. but honestly, since this the demand of the TV program was almost a copy of the original, i did not care too much.

There was this cool music program I worked for, called Lola Da Musica. I did the graphic design and made ‘bumpers’ (the little animations between items) and some of the leaders.

We covered the Lowlands Festival somewhere in history, and I made films on the spot: the camera operator and I went into the multitudes and tried to catch material I storyboarded beforehand. I also had music prepped and whenever there was a moment in the mobile cutting room i edited the clips. Lowlands was friday, saturday and sunday – the program went on air sunday night.

This tv show opened with my car and out comes my friend Marleen, who did the camera except in this shot where we see her legs.

The material looks crappy, but hey, these were the ’90s! Everything looked crappy! I don’t have the original betacams – those were re-used in tv stations so this is what I recorded on VHS when it was on telly. Yes, VHS.

I only partially deserve credits for this: My friend Rosto and i had this design gig for the TV program and we transformed an anonymous tattoo into this image as we wanted to communicate that pop music was part image and part religion: but definitely worshipping icons.

Most material is gone by now, since ‘betacam’ videotapes, on which TV was shot in the ’90s, were re-used to save on budget. But i dug up this title from a program I worked for in that period – I was the graphic designer for some Dutch TV programs (Lola Paloeza, Lola Da Musica, Lola Moviola, Spirit of America, De Toekomst and some occasional others)

This was a special on Jan Akkerman in Lola Da Musica. I think the guitar work you hear during the title is mine actually – hahaha i was a ballsy youth! Special about the Dutch guitar master and play something myself whahaha.

I made this promo for Lowlands together with David Kleijwegt, who was the editor in chief for Dutch TV program Lola Da Musica at the time.

This was made in collaboration with Roelof de Groot, alias Potato Die. Wendy played violin for this so once again, we did this with the Paxy Dragon crew!

This was an end ’90s tv program (at the time, everything was shot on videotapes, kids!)

De Toekomst (the Future) was a Dutch TV program broadcoasted by the IKON. It was so-called ‘Slow-TV’: two intelligent people would be chatting about the future for an hour.

As a design choice, i had them sit in a pop up studio in a high building overlooking Amsterdam. We made sure the interview would be done during dawn, so you’d see the city become dark with the deepening of the conversation. It was really beautiful to see the traffic-, house- and commercial lights in the background playing a role in the background of two people cut off from it by the studio light.

(I have to say a big thank you to Tim Smith of the Cardiacs at this point – samples of intros by ‘The Cardiacs’ were used for this intro)