A Day in the Life of Two Creative Directors

Last year, Amsterdam-based digital agency code d’azur welcomed Jeroen Thissen and Dani Polak to the fold as senior creatives. Between them, the duo have worked for international brands such as Adidas, Heineken, KLM, McDonalds and TomTom.

Now fully fledged creative directors, Jeroen and Dani take us through a typical work day at the agency, with some nifty pictures to boot!

08:15

So this is normally where every morning begins. On the right, next to the palm tree, you’ll find our office entrance. Most of the time we skip this and go straight ahead for a stroll to our local cafe near the Brouwerij ‘t IJ windmill  to discuss work and life in general.

09:00

In the car off to Rotterdam! It’s just an hour’s drive where we meet up with the highly talented design duo Jurjen Versteeg and Ashley Govers of From Form at their studio.

10:30

Together with From Form we’re building this insanely cool installation for a project with our client ABN AMRO, a nation-wide bank here in the Netherlands. It’s somewhere between a marble track and a machine, where a Euro coin travels through a hand-crafted wooden installation to help visualise the different routes our savings can take.

11:00

The entire installation is being built by hand, with each component motorised to get the timing of the movements just right for the shoot. We’re trying not to use any post for this part, so everything has to come together perfectly.

11:30

Some crazy cool details that will be part of the final installation.

12:00

Since the shoot is quite technical, the shooting board turns out to be a bit of a puzzle.

12:30

Once we’ve filmed the journey of the coin through the installation, the footage will be transformed into an interactive online film where people can select their personal saving routes depending on their situation. What this means for us is many, many scenes to shoot. 

13:00

Just a quick lunch at this great Moroccan place before we head back to Amsterdam.

14:00

Busy reviewing the design team’s work for one of our other clients, Brunel. With Brunel being one of the competitors in the Volvo Ocean Race, we’re seeing a lot of these nautical themed images lately.

15:30

Good news! We were notified that we’ve got two of our Tele2 cases nominated for the Lovie Awards (in three categories). With another three cases shortlisted, this calls for a little celebration...

16:30

Just a quick catch-up with the developers who are building an AI-controlled-Trump-robot (yes, you read that right) for the annual Amsterdam AdNight.

17:30

And as a cherry on the cake for today; a review with these two happy faces; our creative team Astrid and Myrthe.

20:00

Work mode off, study mode on! Jeroen spends his Wednesday nights studying Design Driven Business Innovation at the university of Amsterdam (totally not a posed picture by the way).

21:00

Meanwhile, Dani spends his Wednesday nights doing something totally not work related; studying Japanese (yes, this was just before class...he may have forgotten to do some of his homework). さようなら.