Interview Erik van Veen
Research on design graduates and their careers
On Friday the 24th of November I visited Erik van Veen. Erik is a HU University, communication and multimedia design (CMD) alumni. At this moment Erik has his own company named We Seek Trouble. I went there to see what he is busy with currently and how his CMD-studies have helped him to set his career in design.
The beginning
In 2011 Erik started studying CMD. Previously he had been in hotel management school. He was very bored there and had no motivation to do something. There were a lot of ideas in his head that he wanted to get out in the open. For that reason he when he finished in that degree he went and look for something else and found CMD. Here he was able to carry out a lot of ideas and concepts. He got really motivated, others could see this. Sometimes they told him to tone it down a bit, but he liked it so much that he couldn’t hide his enthusiasm.
In the next year Erik began doing some freelance work. He looked for different people in his circle that he could make things for. Friends, families and fools: the 3 f’s. These are the first people you should go to when you have an idea or want tot start something for yourself. Through your family and friends you can get different assignments. If you make something nice for them most of the time they’ll recommend you to someone else. This is how Erik created work for himself. He was able to gain experience and learn some new skills.
Erik majored in UXD in his third year. In the UXD classes a lot of concepts were made. One of the assignments was to come up with a concept within one week and pitch the idea. When he did this he learned how good the pitching of his ideas went and started doing this more often.
Internship and work
In 2014 it was time for Erik to go on an internship. He wanted to know how it would be to work at a big design company in Holland. At the top of his list were Mirabeau and TamTam. Mirabeau it was. During his internship he learned a lot of things. It was a success, so Mirabeau asked him to stay. He eventually ended up working there until he graduated.
In 2015 Erik graduated with an assignment that had a lot of impact on his career. In school people had a lot of great ideas. But in reality nothing happened with them. Most people had a background in design. Programming was never considered because almost nobody could do that and they weren’t thought that in school. Erik started to go to networking events to recruit people who could help him with various projects. Nobody could really help him. It was a shame. How could such great ideas not be passed on to be seen by the whole world? Erik came with a solution. Kollabo.
“Kollabo helps ambitious people with good ideas to find the most relevant collaborations to turn ideas to reality.”
On Kollabo you can post your idea, who you are looking for and what kind of positive impact your idea will have on the world. The idea was to realize different workspaces in Holland for all these people if the concept would ever turn out real big.
Kollabo got nominated in Holland, but also outside of Holland and won a few awards. Erik went to conferences to show his idea. It was a great succes. But living of this wasn’t possible. He didn’t earn any money with the making of this platform. At that moment he was still working at Mirabeau. He was thinking about starting his own company. In the past two years he had worked on different projects and had made his name known in the design community. His work was valid and believable.
This is how We Seek Trouble was founded. Because Erik had been networking a lot for his graduation assignment, it wasn’t hard for him to get work in his company. Different people wanted him to work for them. Within a half year he was fully booked. Alongside with his workpartner Mike — that he met during the making of Kollabo — We Seek Trouble was brought into the world.
We Seek Trouble is a company in which different ideas are brought out to life. These ideas get sketched out and prototyped. Then they get presented to the client. If the client approves the concept they go further into realizing the concept.
On weseektrouble.nl you can find more information about the company.
(all written in dutch)
CMD
Erik told me that the people who chose to major in content design often didn’t find work after graduating. Design is so broad that there are a lot of different options. This makes it hard for them to really choose a path they want to go in. Students should think about the job opportunities that lay in different fields. You don’t want to end up studying without being able to have a job right?
UX has different elements in it. It exist out of interaction design, visual design, concept ideation and even more. He recommends everyone to re-evaluate their choice in majoring. At the moment almost every company wants a UX-designer. This could be in interaction design, service design or something else.
Erik has worked for Adidas. It was his job to improve the in-store user experience. He didn’t have to do any work on his computer for this. But because of the user-expertise that he has, he could be used.
During his studies Erik didn’t really design anything. He was more about making concepts. When he started working for Mirabeau was when he started to design. He had to figure this out for himself when working on a project. Erik had noticed that there are things others can do 3 times as fast as he can. He tries to broaden his knowledge about certain things. But there are people in the company that can do it better, so why would he even try. It’s good always good to learn new things in your free time. But when it comes down to real work it’s much more efficient to get the real experts in.
CMD was a toolkit that helped Erik in the right direction. He didn’t’ see it as a school, but more as something that helped him to do other things. It was a start in the great things he would be doing later.
“Being a design student things wont get fixed for you. You’ll be assisted in the things you want to accomplish. You will have to take the initiative to do things yourself.”
Future
Erik would like to take a creative lead position somewhere later in his career. At the moment he has to focus on a lot of different things. He just want to make cool things for others.
Recommendations
UXpin
Meetups
Dribbble
Awwwards
