Our company overnet GmbH was a partner of just another ad agency and we basically worked with their clients in the early days of CD-ROM and web development. Audi’s start into the web and its first CD-ROM came out of our shop as well as a lot of interesting stuff for Jung von Matt, the advertising partner of ours. (http://www.jvm.de). This was until in 1997 I decided to go out on my own and explore new opportunities and different and more professional companies.

In the time between 1998 and 2000 I was working in Berlin with Meta Design on the initial Audi-TT website, I was briefly working as creative director for Frog Design in San Francisco and finally returned to Hamburg to work as creative director for Razorfish. Since then I spent time with Razorfish in New York helping keep http://www.schwab.com consistent, and finally ended up in Los Angeles to follow my strong interest in broadcast and broadband. The first thing I did here is helping redesign go.com the Disney portal which can be found under http://www.go.com. Since February this year I am trying to help converging interactive and broadcast design skills to be prepared for the broadband/interactiveTV age. Projects included a demo for the Razorfish broadband summit, an iTV project with the American Film Institute and a broadband datacasting assignment.

During the last 3 years I was also playing with my design concepts on my own website and as a guest in some other online places, basically to find an outlet for my very own point of view which is more driven by an interest in design than in business. http://www.jenett.com Based on the work on my own website I had the chance to meet up with an incredible bunch of people all around the world, whom I highly admire, and whose input has shaped my point of view in a significant way.

From my point of view there will be no big difference between either in a couple of years, customers/consumers will simply get what they are asking for. fueled by the desires that are placed in everybody’s heart and soul by advertising or whatever we will call the coming convergence of entertainment and business.

If somebody asks me if it is necessary to understand technology to do good design I would answer the following: It is an absolute must to understand it, yet just understanding and mastering technology doesn’t do anything for your design skills.

Software: After Effects, Director, Flash, BB-Edit, PhotoShop, Illustrator, Word, Eudora, Final Cut, Sound Edit, Media Cleaner and sometimes Flame in the editing bay.

The screen in front of the users will be defined by the content and not by the shape or environment it is located in.

Frog Design is trying to take this one step further and is very much formed by the genius and character of Hartmuth Esslinger.

Razorfish of course is whole new kind of company that has taken the leap from a web design place into a place the designs businesses and opportunities in the new economy. The charm is that it still lives up to its outstanding quality standards and its New York Underground attitude, at least as far as the design department is concerned.

The trick for big international agencies is to align all employees with its core values and habits of the craft. At Razorfish the whole company spent a weekend in Las Vegas to refresh the spirit and get lost.

Do I think that creativity suffers in big companies? Yes. Why? Because even creative decisions are made by committee. Also big companies by nature require bigger and more timid clients so that the design usually is less of an issue and becomes a side thing. Did my creativity suffer? No, I am still interested and do what I think is right for me and our clients. Also I really think that design is not the same as business and I would never expect to completely fulfill all my ideas in billable projects.

Is that good or bad? I would say after a while and everybody had its ‘small-type-face’ it becomes very boring and also hard to understand. It actually just looks like an information and functionality driven interface, but in reality it is just decoration.

If I remember right that was what I wanted to say with my quote.

Always challenging the constraints can only be achieved by knowing the environment very well. This plays into the question above about technology savvyness and my answer stays the same: Technology knowledge is a must, just technology is by far not enough!

For me design is measured by how well an object communicates its entity through its appearance, or how well it communicates its context. I expect a sponge to look like a sponge and not like a pan! Only that way I can make sense of my environment and its meaning.

I do believe that there will be design agencies, they will be specialized in design, not in anything technical. They will only stay on the top of the possibilities but will provide what they do best, which is building brands in form, function and narratives.

My very own design process is a mix of trying to integrate my real life observation into the work and by sticking to the concept. If a project, for example, has to be highly functional, I try to find out what can be done to make it that way and then I emphasize these elements.

If it is highly emotional I try to show this. In general I think it is hard to put in words what you do while you work, my goal for projects that I care about is to be as original as possible. I achieve that by doing something, stepping back taking a look at it, redoing it, following an idea in that process, doing it all over again.

Inspiration has come from the places I lived in, the books I read (and I am not talking coffee table design books!), the teams I worked with, the friends I have. And all the other things in life.

I am often surprised how hard it is to really do something that is not just a knock-off of somebody else’s stuff; the more you know the harder that gets.

Sometimes I am not even sure if we can be really creative at all, or if the term makes any sense. Think of it, we are all using the same ingredients over and over again, type, color, form and rhythm.

Always learn typography; design is older than the computer and will stay around after this phase. Learn sequential thinking instead of spatial. Viva la revolucion!