Shillo Stories: Eva Van der Borght

Hi, I’m Eva – I create branding and packaging, and believe in creative living. As soon as the pandemic shut down the world, I leapt at the chance to build my own business, Anders Design Studio. I believe that strategy and data build a great brand, combined with a dash of luck and lots of experimentation and conscious design decisions, instead of following what’s trendy. I’m also a huge fan of utilising colour and showing personality as a brand. When I'm not working, you can often find me crafting and creating with my hands (as evidenced by my apartment filled with DIY projects).

Inspiring me

I'm a big fan of finding inspiration in the past and lose myself quite often in the online libraries of the NYPL, The Met, Rijksmuseum etc. I also love buying books and magazines from the early and mid-1900s. There is so much inspiration out there in these old manuscripts, magazines and digital databases, however the best feeling is finding a new one with OpenAccess Imagery. I’ve collected some of my favourite openAccess Image libraries on my website.

On reflection

As designers, we tend to spend our days in front of the computer, finding inspiration online. Your entire working life tends to be digital. A mindset shift I had to push through in my career is taking a step back and going offline — even when you feel that you need to push through.

Forcing myself to push through often has the opposite effect, resulting in mediocre work and mostly frustration and tears. It’s only when I take a step back, turn off my screens, and do other things that I can work out how to continue. It's incredibly hard to do, especially if you have a looming deadline. But letting your mind wander, taking the time to create something by hand, and getting out of the zone is sometimes the nudge my brain needs.

What's cooking?

At the moment, AI is creeping (can we still call it creeping? More avalanching...) into the design world and I’m excited/nervous to see how it can support my design work. From doing research to brainstorming concepts (with lots of tweaking from my end), and creating images and mockups to bring client brands to life - there’s loads of possibilities to insert AI into your workflow.

Last month, I decided to use only AI (and my creative brain) to create a new brand with campaign posters. Enter Fern – a completely imaginary furniture brand with futuristic, hip, young, gen-z and unique pieces of furniture.

For anyone scared about AI replacing you - I truly believe it will never replace human imagination and creativity — or it will take a really long time, still. However, ignoring it and not experimenting with the available tools, hoping AI will go away, is not the right attitude. So, try your hand at something and get to know the tech.

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Amazing read, thank you Eva!

Check out Eva's portfolio and connect on Pinterest, Instagram or LinkedIn.