Milan, mid-2000s
Where it all started
It started in front of the television, as a kid, when the cartoons cut to ads. That was the spell: how a headline, an image, the right pairing of picture and words, could land a whole idea in a second, faster than any paragraph. I've been chasing that first spark ever since.
I went to art high school near Milan, then to NABA. Pure art was never the point, though. Communication was.
Building things to sell
Alongside school ran a self-taught streak: a school band, organising events for small and medium venues and open-air festivals, teaching myself electronics, and building and selling my own guitar amps and pedals before twenty. A first taste of entrepreneurship.
Make something good, that makes sense and looks right, and it sells itself.
2010
A space called Loft51
Fifty-one days of something real.
Outside school I couldn't sit still. With friends I ran a cultural association for years, then built something rarer: a temporary concept space, one of the first of its kind, made from a closed-down restaurant.
It ran for exactly 51 days, with 51 curated events across three months. Apple and IKEA came on board with gear and furniture. It was full every night, and people were sad when it closed.
My first agency
First agency, real craft.
Loft51 put my name in the local press, and work followed: film and TV sets, brand and design jobs across the city. What kept surfacing wasn't the visuals, it was the ideas.
Then I met Matilde, an art director from the Milan advertising world, and we started Barbablu. For about three intense years we made commercials, billboards, identities and websites, a lot of it for startups building a brand from nothing, right as the social wave broke. I learned the craft and the business at once.
By the mid-2010s Italy felt small for what I wanted to build. The Netherlands looked ten years ahead.
2015 · Italy to the Netherlands
Moving to the Netherlands
A new country, a real education.
In 2015 I left Barbablu for Rotterdam. Near Delft I joined Innovattic, building apps and mobile games, and got my real education in UX and UI, working beside developers.
It moved fast: within two years I was set to run the design department. Along the way we took third worldwide at the Global Game Jam in 2016 (with this game) and first at Dutch Hacking Health in 2017. Then I turned the promotion down and went independent.
Prototyping on the side
Hohum Lab, hardware for music.
With my friend Berend I started Hohum Lab, prototyping music gear on Arduino and ESP32. It grew into an online shop shipping worldwide by 2018; professors taught with them, artists played them on stage, and I ran hands-on workshops too.
It ran until 2021, when I closed it and open-sourced everything so the community could keep building. Still referenced today, and still a point of pride.
From lab to studio
Protobureau, and the space that stayed.
Through Hohum I met Razvan, our 3D-printing supplier. We took a shared studio and started Protobureau, prototyping IoT devices, playgrounds and installations for Dutch municipalities. It was where hardware and design finally merged directly in the work.
The studio outlived the business: it became TOFKAP, a space that exists to gather people and grow collaborations, and it's still going today.
today · Rotterdam
The studio now
One mind, a trusted crew, technology in the mix.
When clients started arriving from the US, China and beyond for bigger work, I focused everything on it. That's What about Gian: less a traditional agency, more a studio built around one strategic head of design, directing a crew of trusted freelancers toward the best outcome.
What makes it different is the technology folded into the creative, IoT, interaction and now AI woven into brands, campaigns, events and stands, next to all the classic craft. Right now I'm deep in AI: a full methodology for merging code and creativity to build unusual things fast, and I train my collaborators to work the same way.
Also building
Two things running in parallel.
Vitalforce Creatives B.V.
An agency I run with my partners Todd and Ivo, embedded inside the manufacturing chain of an ambitious supplements and cosmetics group. Brand and factory as one system. I'm its Managing Director.
vitalforcecreatives.com →FindYourCable
A hand-drawn guide to cables and connections from 2016, rebuilt last year into a self-sustaining site with its own affiliate system. Not everything has to be big to be worth doing.
findyourcable.com →A few highlights
A few things that stuck.
- 2017Dutch Hacking Health, first prize. It spun out into a health-focused startup.
- 2016Global Game Jam, third worldwide.
- MilanLoft51, city press and a community that filled it every night.
- 2018 · 2021Hohum Lab, open-sourced and still used by universities and artists around the world.
Still on stage
Music, live, with EZUKE.
Music never clocked out. After moving north I swapped the guitar for synthesizers, and today I play them live in EZUKE, a Dutch electro and dance act, performed with real instruments, not laptops.
Same instinct as everything else here: build the tools, then use them in front of people.