Geert Debets — multi-disciplinary designer

The old design leaned on text, not visuals, so kids couldn't play it alone. The redesign put six-to-ten-year-olds in charge: visual-first, clear enough to lead, yet built so deeper moments needed a parent, keeping it a family game.

The animal illustrations came from an external designer and the copy from the museum. My work started there: a heuristic evaluation of the old design, desk research into what young children find engaging, interviews with families, and continuous validation with the museum's stakeholders.

Kids led the hunt, sign to sign, picture to picture, no reading needed to follow the route. Parents stepped in only briefly, reading a sign's short fact or task aloud. Everything else, the visuals carried alone. The redesign shipped, and in its first autumn break, the museum went through 3,000 copies in a week.

Good price, good function, good design. Every furniture brand claims all three, so the claims blur into noise. The brief, a spec campaign for my branding specialisation: find IKEA a position rivals can't copy, beyond the products themselves.

Research kept landing on a single truth: every IKEA feels the same, wherever you are. Far from home, familiarity beats novelty — Byron Sharp's mental availability. So instead of inventing a story, I set out to prove the one already true.

Local Store, Global Standard: each city gets handed another city's ad. New York's poster in Utrecht, Utrecht's in Cairo. The double-take resolves into one promise: the city changes, but IKEA's standard never does.

Everyday objects don't usually get an opinion. On Klassiekers, they do, and they're not polite about it. My self-started channel puts a voice on the thing you're ignoring and lets it call you out: direct, funny, no filter. Can AI animation actually design attention?

Every video starts with a concept, not an object: how do you get a stain out of your clothes, how do you keep food fresh longer. The scenes, and the videos, get shaped around that. Thirty seconds on screen, fifteen hours behind it, run through a prompt system I built myself, but the storytelling never goes to AI. That stays mine.

Klassiekers has grown into the largest AI channel in the Netherlands. Twenty-five videos in, 140K+ followers and over 40 million views. Proof attention can be designed.

Open Trein Festijn: the one weekend the museum opens trains that stay closed all year, and visitors step inside. My brief: turn that energy into an aftermovie built for Instagram.

One weekend, no second takes. I shot with the edit already in mind: three seconds decides if someone scrolls past, so the pace never eased in, every second pulling into the next. Once a cut worked, I committed. No endless tweaking.

It became the most-viewed video on the Spoorwegmuseum's Instagram. The trains closed again that Sunday, but the video is still traveling.

Dafi is a rising luxury address for fine watches and Hermès bags: waitlist pieces, in stock and authenticated. World-class collection; the right audience just didn't know it yet. My job: social video that put Dafi on their feeds.

For an audience drawn to the feel of success, you don't sell the product. You sell the experience. Every video opens like someone just grabbed their phone: no gloss, no barrier. Then it snaps into a sharp edit of the watch and the bags.

The videos pulled 50 million combined views and did the job that matters at this price point: the following multiplied, and new followers walked into the showroom as real customers.