I am two souls…

This old dog is still digging for fresh bones.

I am my own small design company for graphic & website design, with a special interest in game design and gamification. I love bright, fearless colors and text that isn’t afraid to present itself as a graphic element. When those two aren’t constrained by commercial briefings (“can the logo be larger?”), they explode in wild illustrations as small as a dead bird or as large as a ceiling.
These last years I’m focusing more on image creation, rather than on HTML and CMYK.

This old horse is always grazing for more ethics.

I’m a trainer, instructor, coach, thinker, writer about behavior, motivation, cognition, research and ethology of horses. For a while now I’ve been trying to make a better life for horses based on the principles of clicker training and game design. It’s a fast spreading non-violent way of motivating horses, which helped to drive a bottom-up change in how to train animals. The most surprising of all of it is probably that I learned a ton about explaining difficult stuff to humans in speech, text, images and games.

…in five colours.

me as an artist

Art on Everything(e)

me as a designer

CremeBrulee

me as a thinker

me as a writer

Grondwerk, Rijwerk en Denkwerk

me as a teacher

ClickerAcademie

Looking for new adventures!

Author, designer, illustrator and publisher of ‘Rijwerk’ (ISBN 9789082003413)

After a century of haphazard cooperations and organisations of demos, fairs and courses, finally gathers an official team of 8 Belgian and Dutch horse instructors and starts up the ClickerAcademie | Developer+producer of live and online courses, gamification for education, social media & marketing | Gains extra skill points for handling Dutch people | Midjourney, MailChimp and some Figma

Leaving my daughter’s horeca adventures behind (phew!), returning to art & horses.

Oh joy! New job: door-to-door delivery for 42Brasso during the corona lockdown | Learns the importance of clearly visible house numbers

First real outdoor graffiti, for the fun of it (Boomsesteenweg Wilrijk) – “When life gives you lemons, trade them for a goat” | Starts teaching clicker training courses at Odisee

Fuse, Mixamo, and a little bit of Animate

Startup helper of daughter’s restaurant 42Brasso and café 42Saga | Management, interior design, print, social & multimedia, administration yet also supply management, waitress, commis, sous-chef, dishwasher | Both Art & Horses stuffs take a backseat to the development of various horeca skills

Author, producer, publisher Theory of Fun international online course

Completes ‘Introduction to Psychology’, University of Toronto

Completes ‘Gamification’ course, Wharton University of Pennsylvania

Learns Prezi, which is fun for a while | Author/designer/illustrator/publisher book ‘Denkwerk’ (ISBN 9789082003406)

Discovers Runescape. Hooked to online gaming ever since | Starts teaching “Training Psychology of the Horse’’ course at Syntra Midden-Vlaanderen and Limburg

Author, designer, illustrator, publisher “Grondwerk met Paarden” (ISBN 9090190740)

Contributor ‘Horse Training’ to ‘Encyclopedia of Animal Behavior’, Marc Bekoff (ISBN 0-313-32747-5) | Discovers WordPress CMS. Hallelujah!

Drags herself through the basics of Drupal CMS. It’s no fun whatsoever.

Goes vegetarian (ikr. But can’t teach the ethical training of horses, then eat them.)

Independent graphic designer under the name of CrèmeBrûlée | First steps in Premiere Pro | Grudgingly switches from Apple to PC.

Real cool fireworks in Antwerp. Computers somehow don’t die | Switches from QuarkXPress to Indesign | English levels up to 4.0

Creative Director at ADH Advertising | Discovers CSS (doesn’t understand much of it until WordPress happens) | PowerPoint. Like everything from Microsoft back then it’s Extremely Boring. | The horse half is going international (lessons, seminars, clinics, demo’s and lectures in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and UK)

Macromedia Fireworks (for a while) | Gets an iMac and an illegal copy of Dreamweaver | Download of Tom Ryckeboer, first and last and thus the best son of all of them

Macromedia Flash/Actionscript (It makes sites come alive! It’s amazingly fun! It makes sites hugely inefficient!) | Quicktime happens and thus also the first editing of movieclips

Creative Director Flamingo (Graphic Zoo) (NMBS, KMDA, Danone, b2b) | First web designs (written in html, but oh well) | Acquires an Apple PowerPC.

Drives home with a modem and floppydisc on which ‘the Internet’

Freelance Art Director in team with VIP copywriter Hugo Wambacq for Walter Thompson, McCann-Erickson, LDV , Leo Burnett, Publicis, CAT etc. for Coca-Cola, Iglo, Toyota, Het Nieuwsblad, Bobbejaanland, KMDA (Zoo & Planckendael), NMBS…

Art Director LVH/Alliance, Brussels on King, Melitta, Zoo Antwerpen/Planckendael, NMBS… until merger with Publicis | Mad Men Diplomatic Slalomming Skills 2.0, French 3.0 | Downloads Saskia Ryckeboer, wait what? Yet another daughter!

Freehand out, Adobe Illustrator in | Downloads Marijke Ryckeboer, daughter v2.0

Junior art director, later art director at Koncept Advertising, Mechelen | Marie Thumas (now Bonduelle), Ford, Solo, Marie-Jo, Westtoerisme, Milkana, Ovam…

Downloads Linde, daughter v1.0

Quark XPress | Microsoft launches Windows. It sucks, compared to Apple.

PageMaker (yes, I’m that old) | First cat | First (and last, and meanwhile not anymore) husband

Independent graphic designer | First bank loan | First Apple Macintosh | First fax machine | Rapid leveling of Coffee Magic and ‘Ignore 50 yo’s Male Businessmen Innuendo’.

Acquires Master in Arts degree (with distinction) | Acquires Teaching Competence D-degree at St. Lucas-Paviljoen Antwerp

Drops acquired beer & cigarette skills in exchange for red wine skills

Starts Graphic Design & Illustration at St Lucas-Paviljoen Antwerp | First level driving skills | First New Wave/Punk outfit

Architecture at Antwerp Academy (HAIR) | Fails first level twice but acquires important life skills such as using red peppers in spaghetti, drawing straight lines in ink and performing ‘interestingly’ at an early Rock Rally with a B52-like band, ‘interestingly’ being the key word here | Reaches Dutch 5.0, French 2.0, English 2.0, German v1.0

Basics of BASIC (which was basically based back then on Fortran)

First music cassette Deep Purple (hence the concept ‘youthful errors’)

Starts Latin-Sciences and Nun Avoidance Skills at St Ursula, Wilrijk

Straight to Advanced Chocolate skills v5

Acquires basic horse riding & advanced falling skills

Acquires basic bike riding/swimming skills, though fails flying repeatedly

Acquires basic walking skills & Dutch 0.1

Discovery phase | Onboarding | Tutorial levels startup