27-07-2016

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Joost Overbeek www.overburen.nl

Having fun

By 27-07-2016

One Week About Graphic Design by graphic designer Joost Overbeek

Twenty-four years ago (!?) I graduated with the magazine ‘Lolmaken, vakblad voor de lol’ (Having Fun, trade magazine for Fun). Many of my colleagues loved Art, difficult films and literature, but even in those days I liked Fun much better. And I still do.

That always causes a few problems. The most important ones: (a) Clients find it hard to understand that they have to pay for something that you – often together with them – enjoyed very much. Explaining that this crap is my work tends to take away some of their earlier pleasure. (b) Clients, communication people, girls (especially) are so used to correct everything and nothing that they also come up with suggestions about how a joke could be even funnier…

Still, where fun and work meet, that’s where it’s most enjoyable and interesting. I have many examples of this, fortunately. To be honest, most are quite old. The demand for ‘fun’ is decreasing, although we’ve recently been asked for a major campaign ‘à la Babette’. A fairly recent example is the site for Paul de Leeuw. His mischievous head appears to fit so nicely on anybody’s body that I thought it fun to do something with it. And so I did.

It’s easier though to have fun without a client; that’s what I use my booklets for.