We’re back with another brilliant edition of Industry Insider! We spoke to freelance graphic designer, Joeri Gosens!
Tell us about yourself, what is your current role and what roles have you done previously?
I am Joeri Gosens, I am a freelance graphic designer from the Netherlands. I started working as a design marketeer at BrandDeli (Dutch saleshouse for TV advertisements for Discovery, FOX & Viacom). During my studies I did my internship there and after I graduated, I started working there freelance. When I started to get more opportunities in sports design I decided to take the step and completely focus on sports design. In the beginning with a focus on football but now I have shifted my focus to all sports. I have worked for clients like Manchester City, Bayern München, BBC Sport, Formula 1 and more.
What do you do in your current role?
I make designs, animation and other content mainly for the digital channels of clubs, leagues and companies in sports. The main part of this is creating designs & templates for the companies. I am always trying to learn new stuff like for example more animation skills, 3D, AR filters, or new techniques.
What does a normal week look like for you?
I don’t really have a normal week to be honest. My weeks are focussed on whatever my clients need from me. Sometimes I work with companies over longer periods (for example right now I’m with a client that I work for 3 days a week for 3 months) but other weeks I’m constantly re-arranging my planning to try and fit in all requests I get from clients.
How did you end up where you are right now? When did you know you wanted to work in sport?
Mainly through social media. When I was like 14 I started a Twitter page on which I created designs, at the start I just did every request people gave me and my follower count started to grow. I’ve continued designing on there throughout my studies and started to get some clients through social media. I think something that accelerated everything was a period of half a year in which I uploaded every day. At the point I felt I had enough work to stop my other job I decided to go for it and started freelancing full-time. I’ve had interest in working in sport & marketing for quite some time but I decided to orientate myself a bit broader, I felt that if I wanted to work in sports I would always have the opportunity, but I like that I didn’t only have the focus on sports during my studies.
What’s been your favourite moment whilst working in sports?
That is hard to say. I have worked on a lot of stuff that I couldn’t imagine I would get the chance to work on when I started. I think it’s either creating the season ticket for my favourite club or creating the ‘Voetbalplaatjes’. I’ve had a season ticket for Willem II since I was young so it was a big honour to be able to create the season ticket.
The ‘Voetbalplaatjes’ is a Panini like sticker album for which I created the stickers/cards and poster for the album. It was a project for the biggest supermarket in the Netherlands that was printed millions of times and was visible in the supermarkets, on TV ads and in the line-ups of the ESPN Broadcast of Eredivisie matches.
What do you think is next for your industry?
The creative industry will only grow, both in people getting into it and creating their own stuff as well as the demand for good creative. I think the biggest opportunity that’s coming up is the personal branding for players. I feel that when athletes realize the opportunities they have when they take the full opportunity of their own socials, a lot of work will come from that.
Willem II’s season ticket design.
What were some of your biggest challenges when getting started?
I don’t think I’ve had a lot of challenges at the start, I basically started my page as hobby and because I liked it it has slowly grown into my job, I feel the biggest challenges came when I went from doing it as side-job to full time. It meant I got to do a lot more stuff besides creating work, like administration and making sure I have enough work, but also time to take on other cool projects that are being proposed.
What is your creative process like? Where do you get your inspiration from?
My creative process varies a lot but what I like most if I get freedom and can just start working on something and see where it takes me. Important in that process is taking some time off in between and coming back to my work later so I can look at it with a fresh view and make adjustments where needed. I get the most inspiration when listening to music. Sometimes when I get stuck I do check out the Behance profiles of other designers and see how they approach certain projects.
What is one piece of advice you would give to someone wanting to work in graphic design and sports?
This one is maybe cliché but it’s just to start creating and experimenting on new stuff, it doesn’t really matter if it’s not good at the start as long as you keep trying and critically look at your own work. If I look at myself I still have a lot of tools and features in the software that I discover and wish I knew about earlier. Also, likes often don’t reflect the quality of a design so while it’s nice to get them, I wouldn’t put any value to them related to your design.
How to keep up to date with Joeri Gosens work…
You can check out my work at my website: https://joerigosens.com/ and follow me on social media via: Twitter & Instagram.
Thanks for reading our Industry Insider with Joeri Gosens! If you want to read more from the series, you can do so by clicking here.
