Style & Class
Event management and full online guest accreditation and guest management – webdesign and development





FAIR GAME – Animation – Tobis





SOMEWHERE – Animation – Tobis





THE AMERICAN – Animation + myspace – Tobis





TWELVE – Animation + myspace – Tobis





A SERIOUS MAN – animation + myspace – Tobis





GREENBERG – Animation + myspace – Tobis






AWAY WE GO – Animation – Tobis





LIEBER VERLIEBT – Animation – Tobis






LOVE HAPPENS – Animation – Tobis





Belle Pearl Travel – Seattle, USA – corporate design





Gize Waters – intro spot / animation
agency: zweipunktnull





Institute of Rock Music – corporate Design





saxnet – corporate videos / animation
concept / storyboard / art direction





Webcuts.10– Internet Film Fest – trailer animation




AGORA – DIE SÄULEN DES HIMMELS – Website – Tobis





THE GREEN BOX – Website – Concept / Development






woabi – corporate design and webdesign

Teaser website for Arthur 2 und die Minnimoys with Bill Kaulitz from Tokio Hotel. Full website coming soon.

Website relaunch for Tobis Film. Webdesign, web development, community features, video player and upload, social sharing, banner animations.

Website for yogaservice. Web development, consulting and sponsoring, design, programming, community features, yoga studio finder, events and blog.

Logo adaption / design from Vincent TV for Vincentino e.V.

Web development and design adaption for soniq performig arts.

Webdesign and development for Sibilla Calzolari photography.

Relaunch and redesign for project drive. Wordpress development and theme customizing.

Redesign and relaunch for The Post Republic, Berlin. This was created in collaboration with the highly talented designer Julia Guther.

Website for Institute of Rock Music. Theme adaption and design, Wordpress development.

Logo design and stationary for Institute of Rock Music, Germany.

Visual concept, storyboard, design and 3d animation for S3 Graphics, USA. Four movies that will explain the product features of S3 graphic chips.

Layout and Design concept for Stevens Pass, Washington, USA. Photo: chasejarvis.com

Design and illustration for Stevens Pass, Washington, USA.

Relaunch of website for Sharedband UK and US. Visual concept and idea, storyboard, 3d animation, Flash animation and programming. Four intro movies that explain the features of Sharedband products. Website development: Giraffedesign, Seattle, USA.

Logo design for checkitmobile.de.

Last night was the Germany premiere of Burn After Reading — the new movie by the Coen Brothers with George Clooney, Franves McDormand, John Malkovich, Tilda Swinton and Brad Pitt! It’s a really funny movie, so I can highly recommend it! I did the concept, design and programming for the official German website. Many thanks to Petra, Andy and Magnus at Tobis! Check out the website here and have fun (there’s a hidden easter egg, too): www.burnafterreading-derfilm.de.

Stevens Pass, WA, USA use a technology with their ski passes. They now have RFID integrated, so the passes can be used several times and reloaded. That again is more friendly to the environment. They needed an icon which showed the RFID technology and the environment aspects. So I combined the signal with the famous Cowboy Ridge and gave it an overall modern look. This icon is one of a series of icons I designed for Stevens Pass. It’s always fun.

Audioberlin — The Audiotainment Company has a new media player on their website! I integrated this slick and fast text, photo and video player. It’s really easy to use and very flexible if you want to present your videos on your own corporate website.

I'm proud to present the website for the upcoming movie Happy-Go-Lucky by Mike Leigh, starring Sally Hawkins (winner of Silber Bear). There are a couple of gimmicks integrated like flip books and paint splashes. But play around with it yourself and have fun: www.happy-go-lucky-derfilm.de

We’re working on a new community for rucksack travellers on the internet: rucksack.com! Expect lots of cool trip planning features very soon! We just setup a teaser page until the beta starts.

You got to check this out! We created this cool ecard that shows your message on paper cards held by the actors of the movie I’m Not There. Credits go to Samuel and his team who did the programming! And now go to www.imnotthere-derfilm.de and send a message to your friends!

This is the first teaser page I created for the upcoming website for I’m Not There — starring Cate Blanchett, Christian Bale, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger, Ben Whishaw and Marcus C. Franklin as Bob Dylan. Particularly Cate Blanchett is amazing as Dylan! More coming soon on the official myspace movie page I will edit in the next couple of days.

This week the new movie Into The Wild by Sean Penn will start in Germany. I created the website for the German release. It’s a really great movie! Check out the website for more info!

Along with the release of the official movie site for Into The Wild, we created a special myspace page. There is also a cool VW bus tour around Germany. Check out the myspace page for more info.

I’m proud to announce the design of this year’s Christmas cards for Menschen bei Maischberger. It is based on the 2006 christmas card which you can find here, but this year the outlines of the stars are the words “menschen bei maischberger”.

Today I launched the website for the upcoming movie P.S. Ich liebe Dich (P.S. I Love You) which is distributed by Tobis in Germany. The movie stars Hilary Swank and Gerard Butler, but check out the website for more infos and exclusive photos.

Stevens Pass, WA, USA opens the new season with a rail jam competition. And here’s the poster I designed for the event. Nate Escalona, Marketing Supervisor, Stevens Pass Winter Resort: “… the best event poster I’ve ever seen!”

This is a new website for the upcoming movie Der Klang des Herzens (August Rush) starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Robin Williams. I launched it last Friday. It’s based on the website for the US but the German artwork is different, so I had to redesign it. Thanks to Petra and Magnus at Tobis!

Today I launched a promo website for three upcoming movies by Tobis. Starting on December you can win great prizes every week, so check it out: www.dieschoenstenfilme.de.

I’m proud to announce the relaunch of the new workXL AG website! It presents the new corporate design we started with earlier this year. Now we also redesigned the website and set up a content management system (Typo3). Thanks a lot to Lars and Höddi at workXL and everyone who participated in the working process!

This next year, Stevens Pass (WA, USA) will offset the entire propane and power consumption of the resort. They’ll be the first and only “Green” resort in Washington.
In order to adequately promote this, we created a logo that would work on any printed material and also as a sticker.
The green power they are subsudizing comes from wind energy wholesale so we integrated a windmill into the design along with the mountain silhouette of the famous Cowboy Ridge. So, here’s what the new badge looks like.

The Last Legion will start on August, 30 in Germany. I designed a couple of flash ad banners for Tobis and the banners will start today on German websites like moviemaze.

I just woke up with this idea this morning and I couldn’t help myself. I built this website in one go today. I provide on-site Apple support for several companies in Berlin. I noticed that there are no Mac support services for English people I knew of, but there are a lot of people who live in Berlin who don’t understand German at all. So, check out the website and if one of your english friends needs help, send for the Mac Doctor!

Today, we launched the website for tb vent — a company for television, broadcasting and events like Simpsons – The Movie, Pixar’s Ratatouille or Deutschland ein Sommermärchen. The concept, design and development were a collaboration with Peter Ruschel.

Along with the new company profile brochure of workXL, we designed four new product information leaflets. They all come on semi-glossy heavy paper and customized 3D graphics.
You can have a look at the PDFs here:
Deutscher Auftragsdienst – DTAD
European Tender Information – ETIS
Tender Information Module – TIM
Public Procurement Market Research

This is the new image brochure Peter and I designed for the workXL AG. We redesigned their corporate image and added new 3D graphics that explain the benefits of their business. Have a look at the web optimized PDF here. More products coming up. Many thanks to Lars and Höddi at workXL!

This was really a fun job! Christian Maier produces episodes of Uschis Hobbyzoo for Sat.1. He asked me if I could do a short animated title intro that looked like handwritten. You can watch the movies here at Sat.1.

Giraffe Design is proud to announce that our client Stevens Pass has won the award for Best Overall Marketing Program by the National Ski Areas Association (NSAA). We are happy to continue last year’s award for Best Program to Increase Trial By New Participants. We would like to thank the NSAA and everyone at Stevens Pass!

Last night interface!berlin presented an English language workshop by Susanne Killian. Susanne Killian is an experienced interpreter at conferences like the recent G8 summit in Germany. She explained the difference between the German and English language in matters of courtesy and business conversations. Although the Germans don’t mean to be impolite they often make the same mistakes which sound a bit to uncourtly for native English-men. So, the participants learned a couple of tips how to avoid situations like this.

I resisted the iPhone hype so far and I didn’t post any news about it, although I followed the media since its announcement months ago. It is a great device! So, if there is anyone out there with an iPhone you should be able to read my blog within the screen width. No zooming in or out necessarily. This blog is optimized for iPhones (and for Playstation Portables as well).

Update 2007-07-11:
Last night I had the chance to actually hold the iPhone in my hands. The guys at the HSD/Gravis store let me test it. It’s really amazing! It’s better than I expected. The finger gesture interface is so intuitive and great fun! And in fact, I checked if my web site worked on an iPhone — well, it did!

Stevens Pass celebrate their 70th anniversary this year. So, they came up with the idea to have a 70 years seal to promote their special offers. The seal combines a fresh, glossy and modern look with a traditional North-Western style. The typography is both authentic and contemporary.

Last weekend Peter and I launched the website for LimeLight PR — a public relations agency in Berlin. The backend is based on Wordpress whereas the design is completely customized, of course.

The press folders for the upcoming movie Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles will be shipped in customized pizza boxes. My business partner Peter and I presented the concept to Tobis and shipping has started last week!

In collaboration with my business partner Peter, we designed the press folder for the upcoming movie Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I enjoyed watching the TV series in the early nineties and now the Turtles will be on the big screen as CGI characters — really cool character artwork! The folder has almost the size of an LP (25 cm x 25 cm) and will be shipped in a customized pizza box to the press media. So, if you’re lucky, you will have one in your hands soon!

Currently, I’m working on the corporate design for Wiserner & Partner Real Estate, Berlin. Starting up, here is the business card with the logo — a fresh spring green combined with the sophisticated font FF Meta by Berlin typographer Erik Spiekermann. Stationary and web site are in progress.

Business cards for audioberlin – The Audiotainment Company in Berlin.

This work for audioberlin is both a flyer and a business greeting card (sort of). You can find the PDF here.

Peter designed these business cards for LimeLight PR — a PR agency for movie productions in Berlin. I only helped Peter with the first approach and the concept of the design. Check out the spot UV varnishing that makes some areas glossy. The new website for LimeLight PR is currently in progress.

I almost missed the German DVD release of Das geheime Leben der Worte (The secret life of words) – an Isabel Coixet movie with Sarah Polley and Tim Robbins. I designed the press kit with Peter Ruschel for Tobis — one of the finest film distributors in Germany earlier this year.

I’m very happy to announce the design of this year’s Christmas cards for Menschen bei Maischberger. If you found this in your mail, take a closer look at the snowflakes. They are formed of the three words in “Menschen bei Maischberger” and the numbers in “2007”. In each snowflake the word is highlighted with a silver spot color.

The website of audioberlin – The Audiotainment Company has been relaunched. I did a whole new design for the website. It’s not finished completely yet, as the head of each page will have different interactive animations with sounds — a playground for things to discover. The basics of the back-end (originally programmed by the masterminds at area42) were transferred but I had to change the source code for the relaunch, though. Many thanks to Matthias and Jan at audioberlin!

Today was the release of the German DVD Wie in der Hölle (L’enfer) — a French movie by director Danis Tanovic (No Man’s Land) with Emmanuelle Béart, Karin Viard, Marie Gillain, Carole Bouquet and the legendary Jean Rochefort.
In collaboration with Peter Ruschel I designed the poster, lobby sets and press folder for TOBIS Film earlier this year.

Forrest Corbett — friend and business partner from Seattle came to Berlin for a short visit. He spent about two weeks with his wife Rebecca here in Berlin and a couple of days in Stockholm. We had a great time and we scheduled our jobs for the upcoming year. For more information about his company go to Giraffedesign.com.

I’m proud to announce the launch of the website for Arthur und die Minimoys — the new animation movie by Luc Besson. I designed the website for Tobis, the German distributor and it will feature more stuff until the start of the movie in January 2007. Many thanks to Petra and Magnus at Tobis!

Steven Pass in Washington, USA opened a new taco restaurant at their winter ressort. They needed a logo which I designed in collaboration with Forrest at GiraffeDesign, Seattle. It was really a fun job!

Today I launched the website for Christian Maier. He’s a journalist and has produced several reportages and documentations for TV stations like ARD, RTL, Sat1, Spiegel and many more. Go check his portfolio of movie clips online at www.maier-tv.de.

Theater tusdoch — an independent Theater in Berlin needed some quick help for their website. They wanted to publish their trailer video of the current play online, so I gave them a helping hand, converted the clips and put them on their website.

On Tuesday evening we invited the members of the Wirtschaftskreis Mitte to present them our organisation interface!berlin. Dirk Lambrecht, business councilman in Berlin-Mitte was so kind to give us the opportunity to speak about broadband internet and its new possibiities. We had several speakers: Lutz Treutler, CBXNET (Broadband Internet); Eckhard M. Jäger, area42 (Typo3); Alexander Krause, berlin-bits (Web Accessibility) and Hr. Nielsen, SWYX (CBXNET Phone — Digital and Analog Nets).
Together with M. Scheuer of audioberlin I explained the audience what Podcasting is, showed them some of the Podcasts we produced and how it can be used for your company.
You can find photos from the event here.

Teaming up with Matthias from audioberlin and Peter we were shooting a couple of scenes today for the Cornelsen Verlag — one of the leading publishers for educational media in Germany. We shot in a classroom at the Peter-Ustinov-Schule with Julius, a 6 year old, smart boy who did a great job. The films will be used as introduction movies for education software that will help children learn how to use dictionaries and find words more easily. Many thanks to Elisabeth Wagner at Cornelsen for her help in directing the films.

In collaboration with audioberlin, we released the first Podcast of the CDU/CSU Fraktion. The Podcast will be produced every week and you can listen to it here or at iTunes.

This year’s Webcuts.06 is getting closer. So, here’s the first ad I designed which will be published in videofilmen, a magazine for video film makers.

A very good clinic for physiotherapy and other body therapies is Physiotherapie Pia Weber in Berlin-Mitte. I’m occasionally working on the redesign of the logo and the website for Pia Weber. Today, I’m happy to announce the launch of the first website for the clinic. It’s supposed to look both professional in terms of therapy, emotive and friendly. Check the website at www.physio-mitte.de.

Today we had one of our interface!brunches, again. This time an association member CBXNET arranged a speech by Michael Treutler (Dr. rer. pol.) about the basic principles of the media-economic person. Quite an abstract and academic topic which Michael Treutler describes in his book “Die Ordnung der Sinne” (The order of the senses). However, we had a lively discussion about the US market compared to the European market during the brunch. Did you know that audible uses a rather bad audio quality in the US for their files and that German clients don’t accept that low quality because they’re used to higher CD quality audiobooks?

In collaboration with mikemo design, I relaunched the website for Kirsch – one of the leading manufacturers for power generators in Europe. Kirsch builds small portable aggregates, large emergency power systems for hospitals or stadiums and generating sets for special applications. It was a very challenging project in terms of a user-friendly, yet modern design and in ways of delivering a content management system that was both powerful and easy to handle for editors. Credits go to area42 who helped us with the initial installation of TYPO3 and gave us technical support. Special thanks to Olaf Hirschmann at Kirsch, who was in charge as a project manager and system administrator, and to the entire management team.
www.kirsch-energie.de

An acquaintance of mine Christian Lesemann did a shooting for the cover story of the current issue of tip – one of the leading city magazines in Berlin. He shot the mayor of Berlin Klaus Wowereit in a paparazzi style. If you’re in Berlin, go and get a copy.

Today I launched the website for the band Fotos. They’re getting pretty popular right now, so their site had to be built very fast. However, I designed a rather classy and unpretentious style. Have a look: www.fotosmusik.de.

Yesterday, I produced a couple of walls for the current Pixar animation movie Cars which will be used for a press junket. The walls will be behind the actors who give interviews for TV stations. The previews were designed by my old friend and colleague Peter.

Inspired by the great artwork by Brazilian designer Icaro Doria for the magazine Grande Reportagem in Lisbon, Portugal, I designed a German flag really quick this afternoon. I found the flags at anina.net. With all my respect for the original idea by Icaro Doria, I don’t mean to harm any copyrights, I just couldn’t help myself.

This is something funny from my first internship at an advertising agency. The city of Trier wanted caution labels for their car parks to be aware of thieves. So, my job was to think about a slogan. It all ended up with this sign “Diebe nehmen sich so manches heraus” which is a play on words (Pickpockets unbag quite a lot). The signs must be from 1996 and they’re still there. Mike found it and sent me the picture.

I was happy to announce a new interface!brunch which the members of our association interface!berlin organise occasionally. This time area42 presented their latest project for the S-Bahn Berlin. They created an interactive flash map for the train lines with information about delays, constructions sites and schedules. It was extremely fast and it had a good usabilty. You can find the tool online here (only German) and some pictures from the brunch here.

Finished work on the lobby cards for Wie in der Hölle: eight photos from the movie on high glossy photo paper for the movie theatres in germany.

The official german movie poster for Wie in der Hölle has been released today. I designed it together with Peter Ruschel and the final Photoshop composition is about 800 MB large and has more than 60 layers (not counting the text layers which were set in InDesign). It was challenging but fun! Thanks to Magnus at Tobis!

Although I’ve been using MySpace for quite a while (and I hate to say it’s getting more annoying every week), I edited the first band account on MySpace for the hip hop / rap artist Jintanino (Tote Fliegen Records, Berlin). It’s just the first simple approach to using CSS with MySpace to change the look of the artist’s page — and it still doesn’t look good. I think MySpace has to improve its usability and its spam issues or I think the users will switch to other similar, better systems.

Tonight was the premiere of the short film Die Besucher (The Visitors) by Ulrike Molsen at the Eiszeit cinema in Berlin. The premiere party was great and I enjoyed meeting new interesting people. And it was the first time that I could basically hold the final DVD — for which I had done the authoring (see recent post) — in my own hands.

In collaboration with Peter Ruschel our latest work for TOBIS Film has been released today: a new press folder for the upcoming French movie Wie in der Hölle (L’enfer) by director Danis Tanovic (No Man’s Land) with Emmanuelle Béart, Karin Viard, Marie Gillain, Carole Bouquet and the legendary Jean Rochefort. Again, we really enjoyed working on this project for TOBIS – designing a very classy and glossy brochure.
The movie will start in Germany on June, 29.
You can download the 40-pages press folder here (PDF – 1.6 MB).

Today I designed a new web interface for EnviroShield, Washington, USA. Giraffe Design gave me the first approach and I designed the final version — clearly laid out and with some rougher brush strokes to freshen the overall impression. So, EnviroShield are very happy with their new web design.

My good friend and business partner, Michael Schmidt, won the 1st Škoda Talent Design Award. He designed a catalog for a fictitious art exhibition. The new Škoda car models are interpreted by the style of famous contemporary artists. You can read more here (German) and you can download the full catalog here (PDF – 2.6 MB).

I finished the DVD menu design and authoring for a new short film “Die Besucher” (The Visitors) by Ulrike Molsen, today. The interesting part is that the main dvd menu is not only a motion background but a short prequel to the actual film. The premiere of this critically acclaimed short film will be at the end of April. (Package and cover design by Steffen Zimmermann.)

Maya Lipsker — a choreographer, producer, teacher and dancer at the dance studio / theater DOCK 11 — will premiere her new production Face to Face on March 16th here in Berlin. For the first time she will use video projections on stage. I edited some video clips and applied a slow motion effect. You can see the performance on March 16–19 and 23–26 at the DOCK 11.

I’m pretty busy designing for Stevens Pass, and I really enjoy it! So here’s a new poster for the Stevens College Pass sale.

Yet another poster that I’ve designed for Stevens Pass. This time it’s for the Slopestyle Event in March and again, it was a real fun job thanks to Forrest at Giraffe Design and Matt at Stevens Pass.

Matching the Superpipe Event Poster for Stevens Pass, I designed this e-mail flyer for their newsletter.

For Stevens Pass – a great ski and snowboarding resort in Washington, USA — I designed this poster for their new Superpipe Event later this February. Matt at Stevens Pass allowed me free play, so I was very happy to make the design a bit “louder” than usual…

Together with friend and business partner Peter Ruschel, we released the German press folder for Das geheime Leben der Worte — a new film by Isabel Coixet with Sarah Polley, Tim Robbins and Javier Cámara. The original title is La vida secreta de las palabras (The Secret Life Of Words). We designed this folder for Tobis — the German film distributor which was a challenging as well as a satisfactory job — and Charlotte at Tobis was just great! The movie will be released in Germany on 6th of April. We had the chance to see it last year and I have to say it’s a very good story and the actors are brilliant! You can download the press folder here (PDF — 2.5 MB).

I have created an Apple Dashboard Widget for Stevens Pass. It shows the current web cam image of the ski resort. You can adjust the time interval from 5 to 30 minutes on the back side of the widget if you flip it. Mac users can download the widget here.
Sorry, Windows users – you can only watch how it works in this movie here (QuickTime 7 required).

Together with my friend and business partner Giraffe Design, Seattle a new print media is in production for Stevens Pass – one of the largest ski resorts in Washington, USA. This time I designed a rack card which shows all the information you need about the ski resort’s fun park called Tube City where you can ride down the hills on tubes – this really looks like fun! Hope to check it out soon myself…
The photos are shot by Seattle-based Chase Jarvis. He’s been creating stunning photography for mega-brands like Nike, Volvo, Subaru, T-Mobile, Microsoft, as well nearly every ski company, snowboard manufacturer, sports eyewear brand, and niche active lifestyle company on the planet.

Today, I published a new website for the Berlin actress Ines Rosenholm. She played at several theaters in Germany and Belgium such as the Theater Wechselbad in Dresden or the Morgenstern Theater in Berlin. She's a very talented and fascinating person. Check out her website at www.inesrosenholm.de.