Participants

The biggest constant in the work of Niels Meulman, who works under the name ‘Shoe’, is a passion for well-made letters. Whether he’s designing an advertising poster or a skateboard, the ex-graffiti artist throws himself with total dedication into making a good typographical whole.

Jeroen Verhoeven and his twin brother Joep Verhoeven met Judith de Graauw, the other member of design team De Makers Van, at design school. The Industrialized Wood table, the final exam project he made a year ago, has helped the team make its name overnight.

Friso Kramer is one of the Netherlands' foremost exponents of modernist design, which was guided by the principle of functionalism. “We believed strongly in the adage that good design is socially conscious design," he says. “I'm still convinced of that."

After earning her master’s degree in furniture design at London’s Royal College of Art, Ineke Hans designed for the Habitat store chain for three years, and also found time to set up her own range. By the time she got back home to the Netherlands, people knew her name. “I learned in England that you have to make comfortable things," says Hans. “Not philosophical treatises – just comfortable, saleable furniture."

Ivan Kasner turned ten natural objects to stone for his design-school graduation project, Petrifying. “You never know whether your design will survive even a generation," he says. “With these objects, I at least know that they could." He borrowed a vacuum oven from a research institute to carry out the fossilisation and says he also likes collaborating with big industrial companies: “They have money for researching new materials and production processes."

With Jim Richardson and Tamye Riggs, Max Kisman invited designers around the world to create digital flowers in remembrance of the tsunami disaster. “I’m not afraid of the exchange effect of globalisation," says Kisman. “It’s destructive, and at the same time the source of life." He was one of the first Dutch designers to work with computers. But, he says, “As technologically advanced as our society is, art is human work, and it always will be."

Artist Birthe Leemeijer created the perfume L’Essence de Mastenbroek, a portrait in scent of life on a Dutch polder, in collaboration with residents of the area. She often works with large groups and says she feels most at home playing director. “I’d rather develop a work on location, together with others," Leemeijer says, “preferably in such a way that the collaboration takes on meaning within the work itself."

“An examining table is a place where the patient is very vulnerable," says artist Tina Roeder, talking about her piece Naked Couch. Its title, she says, refers to the psychoanalyst’s sofa on which people reveal their intimate secrets. Her intention in pieces like this is to make us see objects with new eyes, to find our own way of looking. “How often do we really look at things properly?" she says. “Everything is pre-experienced for us: we can even see on TV how to have sex. Where’s the intimacy?"

Photographer Rob Hornstra, 30, still takes pictures the slow, old-fashioned way, using film. “When people have to pose for a long time, they eventually relax. Then you can really take nice pictures." In his books, Hornstra seeks to record sociocultural changes. He thinks the Netherlands is overdue for an intermediate-level photography gallery, and he hopes to start one. His own recent book Roots of the Rúntur, which depicts the lives of fishermen and -women in contemporary Iceland, certainly deserves to be exhibited.

For two years, artist Esther Polak carried a compass to help her find her way around Amsterdam. Since then, spatial awareness has been the core element in her work. Classically trained as a painter, Polak sought a contemporary way to represent our economic relationship with the landscape. Milk, her project with Ieva Auzina, followed the journey of Latvian milk from the cow to the Dutch consumer using the GPS navigation system.

Designer Hans Meiboom of communication agency Studiomeiboom believes in fostering discussion. To get people in Amsterdam talking to each other again, he hopes to build the two-kilometre Table de Ville in a park. “I want to bring back the meeting function of the park in particular, and of public space in general," he says.

At a locative-media workshop in Riga, Latvia, researcher Ieva Auzina and artist Esther Polak came up with the Milk project. It used the GPS navigation system to track the journey of Latvian milk from the cow to the Dutch consumer.

Twenty-seven-year-old Brigitte Hendrix designed the fashion collection ‘Something Here Feels Horribly Wrong’ as her final exam project at Amsterdam’s Rietveld Academie. Her collection has been exhibited several times and repeatedly praised in the media.

Dennis Polak and Niels Meulman founded Unruly, an agency that provides creative direction and designs logos, in 2002. Among their numerous projects is Coat of Arms, a piece of street art created with four teenagers for Amsterdam's Bijlmer neighbourhood.

Demakersvan, a design team comprised of three 29-year-olds, Jeroen Verhoeven, Joep Verhoeven and Judith de Graauw, met at the Design Academy in Eindhoven and lived together in a farmhouse. When graduation projects came around a year ago, they knew they wanted to make it as a team. Since then, they’ve sold work to clients ranging from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London to an architectural firm in Los Angeles.

Niels Shoe Meulman and Dennis Polak founded Unruly, an agency that provides creative direction and creates logos, in 2002. Whatever medium they’re working in, whether it’s street art, posters or new media, Meulman says, “the main point is good craftsmanship." Unruly focuses on timeless works; following trends, they say, is out.

At Studiomeiboom, an agency for communication concepts founded by designer Hans Meiboom, the motto is ‘Form Follows Idea’. The thought process is important, and so is staying on top of what’s happening in the world. Meiboom says, “It’s a challenge these days to create a brand. You have to tell a clear-cut story and at the same time remain adaptable. Talking to each other – say, at a table – helps." Perhaps it was work that inspired a recent project, the two-kilometre Table de Ville, which Meiboom hopes to build in an Amsterdam park to get people talking to each other again.