Pim Rakers » portfolio

Dat Wasser vun Kölle es jot

Pim — Thu, 06 May 2010 09:09:16 +0000

Well, I have all moved to Cologne with my girlfriend now. Things are coming along nicely, but it always takes up massive amounts of time before you are really —and I mean really, really— settled. Good thing I like to work with my hands and have a nice tool collection to work with. Kitchens needed to be built, closets needed the be set up and chairs needed to be painted. Sometimes I think I should become a carpenter! Little bit of the product designer in me that makes my fingers itch, I guess.

Working with my hands is what I like and that made me think of some old school work I did that wasn’t on the website already. Simple redesign of a matchbox and some ‘shoebox’ pictures based on the lyrics of DJ Shadows Six Days. Apart from the schoolwork there is a lot more that needs to be uploaded, but I have to get approval from the big bosses first… Very frustrating to have very nice work laying on the shelve, but you can’t show it to the world… Aargh! To hell with legal issues!

Ow and by the way, the titled is written in the dialect of Cologne meaning “the water of Cologne is good”. Since it is pooring with rain today I thought it was appropriate.

Rakers Ontwerpt business cards

Pim — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 08:49:16 +0000

Well, folowing the business cards of Kristine earlier this week it is now time for my own cards. I wrote a post about the production a while ago and maybe it’s just me, but designing and producing your own business cards is really satisfying. The wordmark has been set using a medium bold Helvetica (24 and 18 pts) and the information beneath it was set using a Bookman Old Style 10 on 12 pts. I have to be honest… The cards were long finished, but I haven’t had the time to take some decent pictures of them. Untill I shot Kristine’s that is! Go click below and enjoy.

Mirror, mirror on the wall…

Pim — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 07:30:00 +0000

Just finished a very small and quick assignment for a relative. People who just graduated (or maybe also years after) will recognise the situation where a family member asks you to ‘design a pretty *fill in what you do best*’. The few times I did that before taught me to stay away from situations like this, but this one needed to be done… The relative has her own beauty salon with pedicure at home. Here business had two different fonts, 4 different font styles and the complete colour spectrum was present. It was literally screaming for a redesign. And so I did. Just click on the image below to see more.

Because she is just running a small business the number of prints was also very low. Because of that I decided to try out an online business card printer called Moocards. I must say that they did a really nice job. You can either upload your own designs (like I did) or use some standard templates. The fonts are not really complete as I heard they use some faux bold for their bold typefaces. Too bad, but as long as you used your own designs there is nothing wrong with it!

Golden Treasure

Pim — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 22:11:16 +0000

Searching through my works to post up on this website I stumbled upon the cover I designed a few years ago for the first EP by the Golden Receivers! I am still really proud of my very first, mass produced album cover. The band are friends of mine and I am glad they came to me for the design. They are now working on a third EP which should be released very soon. I already listened to the songs and they are completely different, but in a very good way (for the connoiseurs; more in the direction of ‘Explosions in the Sky‘). Longer songs with more dynamics and less vocals. Click below to go directly to the page or navigate your way through the menu above.

PS: I also added some package shots to the Travelogue “Ich Hab’s”. You can now check out the complete movie and view the box it comes in.

Working class hero

Pim — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 17:29:44 +0000

Jeez, building this portfolio takes a lot more time then I thought. Currently I am bussy exporting and uploading various movies onto my YouTube account. If there is one thing I learned during my study, it is that exporting or rendering movies always takes you thrice the time you thought it would. Something goes wrong, codec isn’t right, sound is screwed up, images is distorted… I should just stick to photography and graphic work I guess, hehe. Despite all those trouble I hereby declare the Video & Animation section opened! You can now see my first flipbook, the big ass Travelogue I did together with a fellow student and a preview of the pMp Lab #0708 rehearsels:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXzovqAuJh8

If you take a good look you can even spot Miss Montreal in the dressing room! Ow, hell, she is already in the preview picture I see now.

And in the category manual labor: I am so glad I found back this tutorial on book making: The Basic Binding of Books by Jamier Butler. Go read it and go do it!

Update in Photography

Pim — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 14:47:40 +0000

Took some time, but the first three galleries are online in my Photography section. Skipping through all those pictures makes me want to get bussy with it again.

Especially the pinhole photo’s. I might have an exposition coming up that might require some pinhole photo’s. I’ll see to that anyway, because man do I love the images that roll out of there. I think it really fit’s the expo’s theme… I can’t say too much about it because not everything is sure, yet.

It will be an expo with my girlfriend, that’s for sure. And it’ll probably be in Enschede too…maybe in the Dynamo?

Graphic section updated

Pim — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 10:27:21 +0000

Well, the title says it all. The Graphic section of my portfolio has had it’s first update. Projects that were added are all some older school related projects, but nonetheless worth checking out.

At the moment I am also bussy getting the Photography section up, but that takes a bit more time, because I have a lot of photo’s I have to sort through and there also a lot of new pictures that never went online anywhere. Bare with me, please.

The picture on the right was made for an exhibition in my former art school we called 99,8% Art. More pictures will be posted in the graphic section later on too. Together with three fellow students Matthias Grottendieck, Philipp Giesseler and Thijs Steggink we made a series of super large pictures build up like a normal raster image.

Instead of printing it with a printer, or any other conventionel method we used spraycans in the colors cyan, magenta, yellow and black. Using a beamer, a laptop and some Photoshop we reproduced (famous) images. If you cannot recocknize the picture that is reproduced here, then take a look at it’s original version. Apart from these rasterized images we made some really psychedelic ones with text, mor about that later on!

Hello world!

Pim — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 17:00:44 +0000

Well, there you have it. The very first post on my brand new portfolio website. The old one wasn’t easy to update and was really not well made. If you still want to get back to that old version you have to look overhere.

This new (WordPress based) website is based on a template I found on line and that was heavily modified by me. A personal design and a lot of CSS-ing later this website was finished and ready for it”s content. That”s what keeps you waiting at the moment I suppose, but don’t worry. Updates will be made!

If you find any flaws in the website, please be so kind to send me . There were some errors while getting this blog to work online and I would like it to run perfect!