About me
Vision
I believe that good design should not stand out to users, but should feel natural. With technology advancing quickly, proper design has become increasingly important for users to utilise these technologies. When new technologies are introduced, the lack of UX design can negatively affect the overall development of these projects. I find the goal of making complex systems easily accessible and intuitive to use very interesting. To achieve this, designs should be simple, direct and intuitive.
As I am still developing my interest, my vision remains unclear. My current vision, therefore, focuses on developing into a designer who can oversee and connect different expertise areas, while learning to decide when to specialise. Bringing this vision closer to reality requires me to further develop my skills in collaboration, leadership, and decision-making, and to refine my ability to trust and leverage others’ expertise.
Professional Identity
I think of myself as someone who is motivated and strives to perfect things. Once I take part in a project I am interested in, I devote all my attention and time towards that subject. Because of this, I usually take the lead when working in groups, motivating everyone and utilising their skills. This keeps the project flowing, motivating all members.
Because of my experience in graphic design and programming, I can often spot structural problems before they are fully worked out. This has helped me a lot with my projects during my studies and has allowed me to work efficiently. When working with people on both the front and back ends, this enables me to ask critical questions and avoid long-term problems, which are often time-consuming.
My current position
My Personal Identity is that of an all-rounder who leads naturally and spots structural problems early. I think it is too early for me to decide on a main direction, and I would like to keep exploring different areas. My vision is to become a designer who can oversee and connect different expertise areas. This, however, remains a challenge for me, as connecting expertise areas requires trusting and leveraging others. This is something I identified in the Board Game project as a weakness. My strongest competencies (Creativity & Aesthetics, Technology & Realisation) are the ones I gravitate toward, while User & Society and collaborative skills are where I struggle. To improve on this, I plan to seek out projects where User & Society is a central topic, rather than ones where I can rely on my existing technical and design skills. These projects require me to trust and leverage others while allowing me to learn from them.
To make my development concrete, I have set the following goals for this year:
To participate in at least two projects where User & Society is the primary area.
To take a non-leading role in at least one group project to practise trusting others.
To document my reflections after each major project, to track whether my collaboration skills are improving.
Experience
Areas of Expertise
Business
and
Entrepreneurship
Creativity
and
Aesthetics
Math, Data, and
Computing
Technology
and
Realisation
User
and
Society
All-rounder
My biggest quality is my experience in different areas, which allows me to be flexible and stay productive. I develop these skills cohesively by working on different areas of expertise at the same time, which I heavily enjoy. As a result, I find it quite difficult to decide what to do, as my preference is to do everything at once. This is where my unofficial motto comes from:
I have no idea what I want to do, so I rather do it all.
Tijmen Kamps
Personal
When I’m not designing, I enjoy spending my time playing piano, watching movies, and cooking. For me, food and flavours are important, and have inspired me to produce my own alcoholic beverages. The reason for this is that I’m interested in utilising different senses for a single product. The way a bottle looks and feels has just as much impact on the experience as the flavour does. While this remains a hobby, it is slowly developing into something bigger.
My proudest project
In the last few years, some of my personal projects have grown more than I could ever have hoped. One of these projects is Het Kwartje, a smooth almond liqueur with a striking bottle design. Developing Het Kwartje and other brands like Tannery and Kwartier have helped me take my work to a professional level.
More than just design
Apart from regular 2D graphic design, adding a new dimension to projects is important, literally. For the animated series ‘Devron,’ a 3D title screen was needed.
Although I had no prior experience animating and rendering at the time, I learned how to use Davinci Resolve and sold the metallic 3D effect by using a custom-made filter.
