01 — Clarity
Find the center
Who you truly serve, what you actually stand for, what makes you unmistakable. Most businesses never get this named out loud — that’s the actual gap.
About Open Spirits Design
I’ve been doing this for a while.
Clients aren’t hiring an anonymous agency. They’re hiring me. Open Spirits Design is my studio and platform.
Who I am
I studied graphic design in Germany.
That was more than three decades ago. Since then I’ve worked across brand design, corporate identity, art direction and digital — as a designer, an art director, and the founder of my own agencies.
I’ve had the opportunity to contribute to projects for organizations including Apple Germany, Bertelsmann and public institutions in Germany and Europe. Different times, different roles, different kinds of work.
One of the more memorable moments was presenting a corporate design direction for DHL with a small agency partnership — directly to a 16-member board at their headquarters. We didn’t get the job. They liked the work, but ultimately chose a larger agency they trusted to handle the European rollout.
I still like that story. Because experience isn’t just a collection of projects you won — it’s also the ones you didn’t, and what you took from them anyway.
I’ve also spent a good part of my life making things outside the traditional design world. Painting. Illustration. Tattooing. Music. I’ve travelled, lived and worked in different places, watched technology change our profession more than once — and I’m still curious about what comes next.
Today, that includes AI. I use it where it makes the work better, faster or opens up possibilities we didn’t have before. But I don’t use it to replace thinking, experience or human judgment. Where specialist AI automation or technical implementation is required, I bring in trusted collaborators — I don’t claim to personally provide every service under the sun.
THE TOOLS CHANGED.
THE FUNDAMENTALS DIDN’T.
A few places I’ve been along the way
Apple Germany · Bertelsmann · DHL · European Patent Office · State of North Rhine-Westphalia
Over the years, I’ve had the opportunity to work on projects connected to some remarkable organizations — through my own agencies, agency partnerships and leadership roles within other creative teams.
Different times. Different roles. Different kinds of work. What matters to me isn’t having big names on a list. It’s what all those years taught me — about people, businesses, ideas, design and what it takes to turn something complex into something people can understand.
How I think about the work
Inside → Out.
You can’t fix an unclear business with better design or more marketing. So every project — big or small — starts the same way: understanding what’s actually there, before a single pixel.
02 — Craft
Give it a form
A mark, a system, a page — built with three decades deciding what stays and what goes. Nothing decorative. Nothing borrowed from a trend.
03 — Carry
Let it hold weight
A brand built on a real center doesn’t need to shout. It carries itself — on a screen, a sign, or a stamp — long after the launch is over.
Not sure what you need?
Good. Let’s talk about it.
You don’t need to diagnose the problem before we talk. Tell me what’s going on with the business, and we’ll start there.