DE TELEGRAAF: From Newspaper Designer to Multi-Disciplinary Creative
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THE CHALLENGE
How do you stay creatively relevant inside one of the biggest and fastest-moving media companies in the Netherlands… for 11 years?
Welcome to De Telegraaf (now Mediahuis).
The newspaper where my creative career truly began.
Long before Mouse Inc., television productions and international brand campaigns, I worked as a graphic designer at the largest newspaper in the Netherlands while still studying Art Direction.
What started as a side job eventually became an 11-year playground where I learned how to think faster, create smarter and understand what truly grabs people’s attention.
Because newspapers don’t wait for inspiration. Deadlines are DEADLINES.
THE GOAL
At De Telegraaf, speed and impact were everything. Every page needed to communicate instantly. Every visual needed to pull readers into the story within seconds.
And whenever a page required something more creative, more visual or more out-of-the-box than the standard newspaper layout…
That’s where they usually asked me to design.
Besides designing newspaper pages, I also expanded into content creation, storytelling, writing and digital media for VRIJ Magazine: De Telegraaf’s lifestyle platform.
Which turned my role into something much bigger than “just design.”
THE CONCEPT
This was the place where all my creative worlds started colliding.
Design. Writing. Branding. Photography. Social media. Storytelling. Psychology. Internet culture.
At VRIJ Magazine, I was given the opportunity to create stories from A to Z:
writing articles, developing concepts, creating visuals, designing layouts and managing social media strategy.
And that strategy paid off.
The goal was growing VRIJ online platform to 1 million monthly visitors. We reached that milestone within just 11 months through strategic content, creative storytelling and scroll-stopping visuals.
De Telegraaf taught me one of the most important lessons of my career:
The uglier the better, in a positive way. Because good design gets attention. But emotional design in combination with storytelling, makes people stay.
THE VISUALS
Over the years, I worked on:
• newspaper design & editorial layouts
• magazine storytelling & visual concepts
• social media strategy & content creation
• lifestyle journalism & creative writing
• digital audience growth campaigns
• branded content & online publishing
• visual storytelling for print & digital media
All created inside one of the most high-pressure media environments imaginable, where speed, creativity and cultural relevance had to work together every single day.
THE RESULTS
For 11 years, De Telegraaf trusted me as part of their creatives.
From designing newspaper pages to helping Vrij Magazine grow to over 1 million monthly visitors, this chapter shaped the foundation of how I think creatively today.
Not just as a designer. But as someone who understands how people consume media, emotion and storytelling. And maybe that’s why I still & will always call myself: The newspaper girl. Because a piece of that world will always live inside me and the Mouseyverse.
NEED A CREATIVE WHO UNDERSTANDS BOTH DESIGN AND ATTENTION?
Whether you’re building a brand, campaign, media platform or cultural moment:
I help transform ideas into visuals and stories people actually remember.
