e_talks are a little segment where we share the story of a member of our awesome team. We'd like to kick it off with Amsterdam's Web Designer (aka Photoshop Artist) Anja Cronenberg. 

“You guys are weird,” said Anja, when we proposed writing a blog post about her. However, the extremely modest Anja deserves to be put in the spotlight sometimes. She can be described as a Photoshop Artist, which is appropriate since before her days in Photoshop she was a painter. How Anja ended up in Edenspiekermann is a bit of a six degrees of separation story.

After studying painting in College she decided to try her creative hands at that web thing. As a young girl, she arrived on the steps of Total Design in Amsterdam. Edenspiekermann’s own Jack Zwanenburg interviewed Anja and was impressed by her portfolio, humbleness and complete lack of ego in her own skills. Another colleague on the TD web team was Robert Stulle.

Long story short, Robert Stulle made his way to Spiekermann Partners. After six years in Total, Anja ended up at Eden (and Jack came that way later, but we’ll save that story for another time). And in 2009, coincidentally, the three were united again in the same company. Anja was able to dig up a little vintage designer moment for this post – the day Jack, Rob and herself first encountered a webcam. 

But back to Anja’s skills. Besides her tech know-how, I’ve never seen anyone as creative in Photoshop as Anja. If you’re ever stuck for a button, shadow, or a stroke, Anja is your gal. Anja is a ‘real-worlder’. Despite spending eight hours a day looking at a screen, Anja gets her inspiration from everywhere outside of the screen.

“I see things around in life, not only in websites but in magazines and television commercials. Especially posters. When I cycle from the train station to work I love to see the cultural posters, they’re always really nice.”

Anja also has a habit of starting collections. They include items that may appear normal to you and me, except with Anja’s curating they start to feel special. Take her crisp [chip] packets for example, she has collected packets for decades. They currently reside in a huge old trunk, “someday I’ll have the time to go through it and do something with them.” I saw Anja working on Facebook designs for Rabobank and she was creating shapes I never would have thought of. When I asked Anja where she got her inspiration for them, she said believe it or not, one source was her salad utensils. Anja has another (awesome) collection of these and the shapes that are at the end of her handles influenced her Rabobank designs.

Bet you didn't think an Edenspiekermann web design came from salad, right?

Perhaps this is why Anja’s work can be so unique, instead of browsing the web for hours looking only in her peer pool, Anja creates her own palette from off-screen sources. And that, is why Anja is our Photoshop Artist.

(A big thanks to Anja for being such a good sport, this was a rather 'subtle' interview. Or more so she wasn't told it was for a post about her until afterward ;)

In the Netherlands, there’s a festival that started a few years ago to celebrate audiovisual and interactive media. This coming May 22nd in Hilversum, the day will be filled with screenings and presentations, culminating with the Gouden Reigers 2012 ceremony. This awards show recognises the best audiovisual and interactive communication projects of the past year. A pretty amazing day, and Edenspiekermann were asked to redesign the accompanying catalogue and identity.

January involved a kick-off meeting with the enthusiastic KITB team, Hans Booms and myself. I’ll be honest, from speaking to such passionate organisers and researching all the entries in the show, it was a special project to work on. Therefore, when brainstorming, our concept naturally came out of three insights to the festival:

1. Interactivity
There are ten categories (ranging from apps to internet to film) and seventy-three entries in the Gouden Reigers. Each of these entries is dynamic, engaging and tangible: pieces you can physically interact with.

2. Process
As the name goes, ‘Keying into the Brain’ directly acknowledges the process of generating ideas as well as creating the interactive media and strategies.

3. Connections
Despite not being well known–yet–outside of the Netherlands, KITB allows people to meet and network with others whom they might not cross paths with.

Oh, and of course this whole event is a celebration of the work and bringing that to the forefront. Hence our main image, created (lovingly and labouring-ly) by our past American intern Jon (Bovi) Lucas. By creating the typography out of thread we wanted to make the catalogue feel tangible like the entries themselves. The whole process of making the type directly came from the three insights. We carried these elements through to the interior of the catalogue also, with the threads interacting with the content. Emily Fischer (our current–and coincidently also American–intern) put hard time into giving all the entries the justice and detail they deserved in the catalogue, creating some wonderful graphic design.

We’re all excited to see how the day turns out. So check our video of the process. And with 504 needles left over, I think we all need to try out some acupuncture to relax after that work.