I’m very glad to present my new site design today. When you tell everybody to embrace new trends and progress online, it’s very important to practice what you preach. Unfortunately your own website is almost always the last project on the list. But finally I gathered all the inspiration of the last year in this project called: USpace. I hope you like it. Feedback is off course very welcome.

Click here to visit the site.

So what is USpace? After long deliberations, it turns out the world as we know it, is mostly you. If you want to change the world, you are the best place to start. It has become a cliché to say that every crisis is an opportunity, but it is important to start recognizing what you can learn from this period. For me the world needs less I and more you. Oh and off course: everything is ON-line now.

I hope this presentation can convince you to engage in fun projects together, and make your communication program suiting for 2010.

You can also watch this small video, accompanying the release of the new website.

Last week I got the opportunity to present the Suicide Prevention 2.0 project to the international E-Mental Health community in Amsterdam. The conference was held in the amazing Beurs van Berlage. Last time I was in that building was 10 years ago, when I attended the last European Flash Forward Festival. I wouldn’t have imagined back then, that I would be presenting myself ten years later, to a room full of mental health professionals.

First, I was wondering whether I was going to be able to grab people’s attention with only preliminary findings, at the moment. But that turned out all fine, because most other attendees hadn’t yet made much action toward the problems of suicide related content online. Beside the fact that they are all mental health professionals, the attendees had a very open mind to technology and the online possibilities. I learned a lot from my fellow presenters from the Netherlands and Israel.

There was much attention for 2.0 media, and web-based interventions. The Netherlands is years ahead when it comes to that. I can only hope our government will very soon see the advantages and possibilities too.

The most interesting presentation, and conversation over lunch, came from another person that wasn’t really a mental health professional. Luciano Floridi is a professor in philosophy from Oxford, although with an Italian background. The most interesting view he presented was, to see the body as an interface, and no longer as a piece of biological machinery. In a time where people use interfaces more than ever before, and where people are more and more transcending their personalities online, this is a very cool paradigm. Certainly for someone like me, making a living with the design and development of interfaces.

For more information on the Prevention 2.0 project, you are more than welcome to attend the Symposium on december 4th 2009.

Today I am proud to announce the launch of the new websites for CPZ. (Centrum ter Preventie van Zelfdoding)

The center if most known for the chat and telephone support lines for people with questions about suicide.

Apart from these activities CPZ is also a knowledge center, dedicated to studies in suicide problems, and training of people who are affected by these problems.

All this information is gathered on the website, and is continuously updated. On the other hand are people who come to the website, with often great emotional distress, people in crisis that are in desperate need of information, or want to call or chat with someone. They need their information preferably with a very low threshold.

It was also important not to exclude one part of the audience of the other part of the website. Any part of information that is useful needs to be available.

It is clear these groups of people need a totally different approach.This duality in the online audience had to be solved in the new website.

We took this duality quite literary, by dividing the interface of the homepage in 2 parts. Depending on your entrance you get the emphasis on the part you are most interested in, but also depending on the mouse movement.  Hovering over another section, causes it to open and give you more information.

http://www.zelfmoordlijn.be

http://www.preventiezelfdoding.be

Three years ago the company Boardcast was founded, and their mission was to develop and deploy the first large digital signage network in Belgium. The network is now mainly located in the Makro stores all over Belgium.

Because of my experience at the Navy and other smaller similar projects, I was asked to work on the first prototypes of these display units, that are hanging in the stores.
I was able to make a unit that works autonomously from the network of the stores, that connects with the Boardcast server, via the cellphone network, to get it’s content on a daily basis, and needs little or no maintenance.

And now I made a brand new website for them, where you can learn everything about the advantages of digital posters:  www.boardcast.be

Last Friday I won a Silver CCB award in the category “Best Website”, for the project  ”The First Printed Website”.
The website needed to demonstrate the ease of use of the Dymo Label writer. What better way then to use the label writer itself,  in combination with its most common mediums,  for the interfaces in this website.

The CCB Award ceremony honors the best advertising campaigns in Belgium,  so I’m glad this rather modest project, that didn’t even target the Belgian market initially, still got picked up by the jury.  

I was responsible for the Concept and the Art Direction, and I did a great part of the production too.  I am even the hand-actor in all of the footage used for the site. The video production was done by my good friend Jonas.

You can see the case movie here.

My contract with Proximity ended last week, so this is a nice farewell gift for them. Unless of course we get a grand finale in Cannes later this month.   
“Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony.”  -  Morpheus

(please note that this project and award is property of proximity bbdo, all my work on this project was done when under contract with this agency, i don’t hold any rights in regard to this project)

As of today I no longer work at BBDO.   I learned a lot over the last 7 years,  won some great pitches and a fair share of awards, but most importantly: I made a lot of good friends there.  So in general it is a very good period to look back at.

With a little more time on my hands I am now open to suggestions.
You can send any suggestion to the address:  suggestions@jandecoster.com

Thanks in advance !

A few weeks ago I was lucky to be able to visit Lisbon again, for the OFFF conference.  And again it was a real eye opener, not so much on a technical level this time,  but more by talking with people with either a lot more experience, or from a completely different background, or from a completely different culture.

There was one speaker in particular, that has been a great influence for me for many years:  Stefan Sagmeister.

He is a real design icon, from another generation for most of you, bringing words of courage in these troublesome times, where lots of different global threats are guiding people to almost primal behaviour and decisions, where ego is often placed before honour in your work. And because of this, these global threats are often misused and blown out of proportion, like we have seen with other global crisis’s and now also with the financial crisis. You can recognise a coward, by looking at the shadow he hides in.

But before you start thinking I am diminishing today’s crisis, let me take the example of Tim O’Reilly, and compare it with the famous Pascal’s Wager. Whether or not the worst is yet to come, we do better when we act on that belief, and try to make something better and add real value to the world. Step out of that shadows.

Stefan Sagmeister is arguably the greatest graphic designer in the world, but not only that. He also spends a lot of time thinking about his creative life, and how to achieve happiness in that. As a result he started making a list of things he learned, and shared it with everybody. I first saw this list about 6 six years ago during his lecture in Amsterdam, and personally I still take a lot of comfort in being almost fully compliant with that list, certainly coming from such a great creative person.

Things I have learned in my life so far:

1. Complaining is silly. Either act or forget.
2. Thinking life will be better in the future is stupid. I have to live now.
3. Being not truthful works against me.
4. Helping other people helps me.
5. Organizing a charity group is surprisingly easy.
6. Everything I do always comes back to me.
7. Drugs feel great in the beginning and become a drag later on.
8. Over time I get used to everything and start taking it for granted.
9. Money does not make me happy.
10. Traveling alone is helpful for a new perspective on life.
11. Assuming is stifling.
12. Keeping a diary supports my personal development.
13. Trying to look good limits my life.
14. Worrying solves nothing.
15. Material luxuries are best enjoyed in small doses.
16. Having guts always works out for me. 

Stefan Sagmeister

Try to comply and see for yourself.

Due to legal obligations, I can not show you all the awards I have won, with my work at Proximity BBDO, on this website.  Please check my Linked In profile for a full overview of the awards.

Yesterday a press conference was held, to officially launch the website www.kijkuitopdefiets.be, which I produced for KU Leuven. Please read the earlier post, if you like to learn more about this project.

Watch the video here.

Watch the site here.