Jack Broeders

The Kinder- und Jugendklinik Freiburg is a new pediatric hospital that opened its doors at the end of 2024. The architects aimed to give the design a supportive function, contributing to the healing process and the overall well-being of patients and staff. They followed the design process guided by the idea of normality: the notion that the familiar, the ordinary, can bring calm and thereby aid recovery.

In line with this architectural psychology approach, I was asked to continue thinking and propose solutions for the further graphic decoration of the interior. The result was an interactive wall in the entrance hall and a series of wall illustrations for waiting areas, patient and treatment rooms.

In an absurdly humorous way, elements from the immediate surroundings (the city of Freiburg, the Black Forest, and the Rhine region) were merged into surreal compositions. They evoke a sense of recognition for what is familiar, yet at the same time wonder and delight through the impossible, unexpected combinations.

The Ongelezen Boeken Club offers you a new favorite endless feed. In an age where daily headlines report on ‘unreading’, the Club’s website offers an infinite stream that you can scroll through (or read).

The website’s metaphor highlights how endless scrolling replaces deep reading. While scrolling provides immediate, fleeting pleasure, reading offers slower, lasting satisfaction. Because online reading is constantly interrupted by hyperlinks and distractions, longer texts are more likely to be skimmed than truly absorbed.

The site deliberately avoids personalization; everyone sees the same feed – one continuous scroll rather than a curated algorithmic stream. It presents an endless, reward‑free environment where the act of scrolling itself becomes the experience, encouraging visitors to reflect on the difference between mindless scrolling and purposeful reading.

Watching someone else scroll is, I think, the farthest you can get from reading.

The recently renovated Museum Hof van Busleyden asked Atelier Alkema, studio OTW and Cecilia Hendrickx to design its new permanent exhibition. Together we highlighted around fifteen stories from the city’s history. The ring shows how the city around 1500 dealt with its poor, its disadvantaged, and other vulnerable groups. The silhouettes of the medieval buildings still exist and can be found on the city map beneath them.

Coöperatie  Ondergrond manages a network of food forests and edible nature gardens throughout the city of Rotterdam. The edible garden around basisschool De Bavokring required some visual explanation of these alternative food systems, aimed at parents, children, and teachers. A series of boards featuring clear, educational visuals was installed around the garden.

The illustrations were created in a loose‑realistic style that blends fun facts with an inviting, organic aesthetic. This approach makes complex ecological concepts instantly understandable, inviting both children and adults to look and learn a little closer.

Studio OTW is a design studio specializing in spatial design. They asked me to create a portfolio website that clearly communicates their discipline. I translated this into an interaction design, with a clean, simple logo design and matching typography, and then handled the programming. The site’s navigation embraces the browser’s native scrolling mechanism, using a horizontal axis to guide users. Moving panels within the digital white space present Studio OTW’s work to the viewer.

Opdrachtgeversforum in de bouw is a network of (semi)-public clients in the built environment, dedicated to sharing knowledge, driving innovation, and improving the professional client role in construction. They asked me to help enhance their digital presence.

For the website, I designed a content structure that supports the organisation’s expert-led output: articles, reports, events, and knowledge sharing. Since many of their articles lacked photo imagery, I created a solution where each article is accompanied by an automatically generated “building-block” illustration derived from its title. This ensures that no page looks bare, or the same.

The new branding for Italian wine importer Eck & Maurick is inspired by the influence color has on wine evaluation and the distinctive color nuances that liquids can exhibit. By sliding overlapping patterns, each category receives its own recognizable label with a moiré effect.

The Ponies and I went to Brussels in a quest for their online presence. Fully known as Pink Pony Express, they are a design collective whose process is best described as research through making, and whose work always leads to unexpected outcomes.

We played out the interaction concept and visual design together, after which I built the full site; from layout to responsive behaviour, from the ever-present card symbol that acts as a menu button, to the sticky, flowing project pages. The layout supports their narrative style: each project tells a visual story, almost like a graphic novel, echoing how their collective work unfolds across public space, research, and design.

The animated card symbol, just off the center of the page, forms the heart of the site; a playful compass for exploring their world.

‘Greetings from your good friend Bokito’ is a series of portraits we work on intermittently. Since 2017, we put ourselves in Bokito’s shoes, to write personal messages to his alleged friends. Bokito becomes our alter ego, but he’s not human, he is a silverback gorilla.

Bokito gained notoriety after he broke out of a zoo, in the Netherlands. He became somewhat of a celebrity – even making it into the national dictionary.

More and more people are acting out their inner Bokito these days. In our drawings, we portray the Bokito in public figures, and sometimes in ourselves. Bokito exemplifies the primal aspects of modern human life.

Historically, animals play an important role in politics – from Chinese pandas to the British monkeys of Gibraltar. Bokito is also diplomatic asset. He helps us come to terms with what lies underneath our thin layer of civility.

Bokito sends his greetings exclusively as A2 self-portraits, and postcards. Among his close friends are Kanye West, Joe Pesci, Recep Erdoğan, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Darth Vader and, obviously, many others.

For Hoogheemraadschap Hollands Noorderkwartier, an animation was created that visualizes the history of the Dutch water boards. Together with the client and experts I developed the storyboard, and subsequently produced the illustrations and animations.

The film tells the story of North Hollanders and their ongoing struggle against water; from land reclamation and peat extraction to devastating storms and the draining of countless lakes. A landscape that shifted from 4 metres above sea level to 5 metres below.

With the visual design I wanted to make the threat posed by the restless waters surrounding the sinking land palpable: muddy, heavy, and oppressive, while also referring to the ever-changing maps of the region that have been drawn over time.