Published by Waacs in corporation with Spinhex&Industrie. Order your copy of Taste here.

Made in a team when working as a creative director at Waacs Design & Consultancy.

Made when I worked as creative director at Waacs Design & Consultancy.

Another trip to Seattle, this time to present the work that we did for Microsoft. I really enjoy these trips, since they nicely combine work with fun stuff, nice people and great food. Stayed in the same hotel as the previous trips in Kirkland and had a ‘Spa Arrangement’, which sounds more exotic than it actually was. But it also included breakfast and that is perfect at the hotel. All great organic food, simply great. This visit was the most business trip to Seattle so far: appointments, appointments and more appointments at several divisions of Microsoft and presenting our brilliant work along the way.

For more, see also the Flickr slideshow.

Made in a team when working as a creative director at Waacs Design & Consultancy.

So I knew an industrial designer now. Great! So I sent Marcel an email with on old idea I had of a modular shelf system. And he was not even that negative about it. Nice. So I thought: let’s give it a go. To help me out, Waacs made some great product renderings of my idea that I named A+B. Then it would be nice to have it made and what would be even better, that it would be presented at the annual Via Milano exhibition. So I contacted the organization on how to get in. Their answer was simple, you have to go via milano. Show your work at the Salone Internazionale del Mobile, and maybe you will be selected for the exhibition. Okay, so I need to present in Milan. I knew that Waacs was also presenting a project there. So I contacted Marcel and asked if it would be an option to get some of their space. Stupid question obviously.

At 11 I ran into Geert van de Wetering, at that time working for VPRO. He was setting up a new tv-show about design, high and low culture, called Picabia. If I was interested into doing some work for that. I told him about me Milan plans and that it might be a great idea to have that as an item in Picabia. He thought so too. It was three weeks before the Salone started, but I still didn’t know if I could use some exhibition space of Waacs. So I called Marcel, that if I would arrange a camera crew following him from conception of his project to Milan, if that would be a fair trade. It was. Hurray! Now I had a place in Milan. And little time to find out if that idea that I had would actually work, to create a model to show in Milan and make it look good. The rest is history:

Marcel managed to ‘hack’ himself into the presentation in Milan, in a presentation of 20 Dutch and Belgian designers who present themselves collectively as ‘Tutto BeNe’. The designers of WAACS (best known for its award-winning design of the Senseo, the best-selling coffee machine of all time) have been so kind to host and support him. His presentation is a kind of a ‘flashmob’ presentation since only three weeks ago he decided had to show his design in Milan. Dutch television picked up his ‘guerilla’ action and is following him in his unconventional ‘road to Milan’.

For the cultural VPRO television program, ‘Picabia’, Marcel is filmed during the development of his very first prototype leading up to the launch of the ‘A+B’ at the Furniture Show in Milan, 5-10 April 2006. This VPRO broadcast will be aired 16 April 2006 at 22:20, Net 3.

We kept in contact ever since. And I joined in on occasion to work on some projects as well. When I called Marcel end of 2007 to ask for advise on a pile of job options I had, he simply said: ‘Why not here?’ It was the most unexpected thing to do, so for me it made all the sense in the world. So I did. I left 9 months later, but we still do projects on occasion and that are always great, high energy projects with unexpected but great outcomes. Not the ordinary, for ordinary people. How it should be.

Oh, A+B was selected by the Via Milano organization for an exhibition. Mission completed.

The 80’s are back—again. Some things come back and some things just never go away. In this age of mobiles, PDAs, digital books, and paperless offices, do you still use pen and paper? Who doesn’t? As long as we’ve got fingers, we’ll scribble and jot, and inevitably cross-out and correct. But this doesn’t mean we have to white-out like grandpa used to! The Pritt MyStyle correction rollers have contemporized analog correction by combining the clean efficiency of a digital backspace with the feel of a gadget—all this without batteries! Aware that neither good style nor good fun will ever go obsolete, Waacs created three designs to match every taste, each with chrome and black rubber ergonomic handles: the practical I-tool can be capped and carried in your pocket; the business-formal D-lux embodies elegance in a classic, tapered pen-shape; and the whimsical B-fun birdie swings and sways atop your desk. So you can wear the Mohawk you never dared don, keep writing in pen, and touch up your text with a confidence that’s here to stay.

Made in a team when working as creative director at Waacs Design & Consultancy.

It was the total opposite of downtown. While downtown was formal, Capitol Hill was not. Simple example: I saw nobody smoking on the streets downtown except for some homeless people and in Capitol Hill people were standing smoking in small groups on every street corner. It was simply far less fast paced. Visited a couple of nice stores there. And while doing that and on my way to another, it started to rain. Heavy, heavy rain. So, I ran into the first bar I saw, named Bimbo’s Bitchin Burrito Kitchen. It was filled with the most outrageous people with masks and tattoos everywhere. Later I learned that there was a tattoo convention or something. Anyway, I felt a bit intimidated, thought of ordering a coke but ordered a beer to blend in more. And also bought a beer for a guy, who was sitting at the bar and looked kinda down with his head in his arms. That beer made him look up, and was possibly the best thing I did. We started talking and he told me he was a student, living in the neighborhood. And offered me a ‘grunge-tour’. The rest of the day we spent waling through alley’s to places where grunge things took place, houses of people I never heard of, to venues where bands were rehearsing and had several great talks.

Seattle rocks. Really.

For more, see also the Flickr slideshow.

Long ago there was Cro-Magnon Man: He hunted wild game and met the women back at the fire to roast his meat under the starry dome of the night sky. Today is the age of Pro-Man and Pro-Woman, who demand professional quality while still heeding their primal instinct to cook outside.

The stainless-steel frame is tilted to form a perfect 90° angle with the hinged boxy cover, when open. When closed, the fully-insulated dome seals completely reaching temperatures up to 400°C. Two round gas burners combined with removable grill surfaces, can be used for multiple, simultaneous cooking methods: open grill plate for meats and skewers; ribbed cast iron closed surface for fragile foods like fish or vegetables; smooth plate for pancakes or eggs; slightly concave skottel for roasting large cuts of meat; round opening for a wok; baking stone for pizzas; and traditional stove-top slow roasting or stewing. The trolley, in sleek black sheet metal and bamboo, has removable side tables and a cutting board, for flexible work surfaces.

This cooking machine provides the quality, style and ease, as well as the boundless possibilities, that modern Pro-Man hunts for in his products—so he can let his imagination run wild and his inner cave man run free.

Made in a team when working as creative director at Waacs Design & Consultancy.

This story focuses on the 3 main ingredients of camping life: bad cooking, being drunk and sex. Story by Ivo Victoria, richly illustrated by Symen Veenstra.

Published limited edition as a teaser for, and a part of Taste/Indruk by Waacs and Spinhex&Industrie.