‘Arnhemse Nieuwe’ has been a jumpstart since 2006 for newly graduated designers from the ArtEZ Academy of Art & Design. This initiative by Ontwerp Platform Arnhem (OPA) gives young designers a flying start in the creative industry. Meet the Arnhemse Nieuwen 2025!
Lotte Bruinink
One of the six Arnhemse Nieuwen 2025 is Lotte Bruinink, an alumna of ArtEZ Product Design. With her project Hot Under Your Feet, she makes climate change tangible. She uses her designs to show how invisible technical processes operate in our everyday lives. In doing so, she wants to make clear how we psychologically deal with climate change.
Why did she take part in Arnhemse Nieuwe? “I wondered whether my work would resonate and be understood outside the ArtEZ bubble. And secretly I also wanted a bit of recognition for what I made. The fact that my project was selected is a reassuring confirmation that I’m on the right track.” A fun detail: her boyfriend Wout is also one of the Arnhemse Nieuwen. “Even nicer that we could do this together,” Lotte says.
From marketing to making
Before Lotte started Product Design at ArtEZ University of the Arts, she studied Creative Business at Cibap in Zwolle, at the intersection of creativity and marketing. That preparatory course gave her a small head start in working with design assignments, but above all it fueled the desire to design herself instead of only communicating about design. She explored broadly, briefly considered graphic design, but the ArtEZ Product Design entrance assignment made the decision: the joy of shaping a concept into a tangible form made her feel she was exactly where she was meant to be.
Translating information into tangible forms
For her studies, Lotte moved from Deventer to Arnhem. Through a classmate she quickly found a room, and because she already knew the city from shopping trips, Arnhem soon felt familiar.
“During my studies I noticed that I can only truly grasp data, stories, and systems when I translate them into images, objects, and movement. That personal way of learning and understanding grew into my design method. In it, research and form-giving strengthen each other.” Looking back, Lotte sees a clear common thread in her work: making abstract information understandable by translating it into visual, physical forms.
Heet onder je voeten
Podcasts about climate change led Lotte to an insight: we all believe something needs to happen, but we don’t act accordingly. “We know it’s happening, but it doesn’t feel urgent,” Lotte says. “We think it’s far away, that it won’t be so bad, that others will solve it.” That’s why, for her graduation project Heet onder je voeten, she developed objects that make invisible technical processes at home visible. A radiator in the shape of a candle, an installation with spinning little windmills. Each object reveals the connection between behavior, energy use, and the hidden technology behind it. The thermostat, for example: by radically changing this familiar object, you immediately see what that one degree higher actually leads to.
An invitation
Lotte’s project shows how product design can make climate change understandable. Not with numbers or warnings, but with everyday things that suddenly work differently. That way, the abstract becomes concrete and the distant becomes close. Although her work is about climate and energy, Lotte deliberately doesn’t want to play the moralist. She prefers to see her objects as an invitation to think critically rather than as a solution or instruction. She hopes people will draw connections themselves, ask questions, and reconsider their own position in relation to climate change.
Outside the bubble
After graduating, Lotte didn’t fall into a black hole. On the contrary: she presented Heet onder je voeten at, among other places, INNOVATE at Musis and during Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven. There she came into direct contact with a broad audience outside the design world. The reactions and conversations helped her step back from the “designers’ bubble” and get a clearer sense of which parts of her project affect people most.
From January onwards she will start as a concept designer at Fillip Studios in Arnhem, where Lotte can further deepen her fascination with invisible processes, technology, and human behavior.
Want to become a member of OPA too?
Ontwerp Platform Arnhem has been offering a program for 20 years that identifies, presents, and discusses key developments within the (design) world. We are here for the individual designer/studio at every stage of their design practice. We are also here for policymakers, companies, innovators, and anyone else who is interested.
This article was originally written in dutch by Nicole Beaujean
