Before Vorsprung, I spent twenty years in creative agencies, the last stretch as Design Director Brand Experience at VML, formerly Wunderman Thompson, working for brands like Samsonite, Liberty Global, Pioneer DJ and Telenet. Then I founded Restless Minds and took what the agency world taught me into business and change. This site looks forward. That is the whole point of it. But today, a quick look back. Four projects tell that story.
Samsonite. Born to go.
Some projects stay with you. Samsonite is one of those. The global account had gone up for pitch, and the question was one every heritage brand eventually faces: how do you become young again without losing a century of trust? The answer: for today's urban generation, being on the go isn't something that happens between places. It is who you are. Samsonite is born to go, because you are.
From that one thought came everything. A new brand story, a new identity, a global toolkit, a film shot on three continents, a custom typeface. We won the pitch. It made me Design Director. And it taught me this: the idea was never the campaign. The idea was the brand.
.comdom. A condom for the digital age.
I was design lead on the Telenet account when we made the project I am still proudest of. One in three Belgians sexts, and when an intimate photo travels further than it was meant to, the damage is permanent. So we didn't make a campaign about the problem. We made the answer: an app that lays the receiver's own name and number as a watermark across your photo before you send it.
It became one of the most awarded ideas in the world that year. Epica Grand Prix, Clio Golds, Eurobest, shortlists at Cannes. But the awards were never the point. A brand, for once, didn't say something. It made something.
Pioneer DJ. Always on.
Pioneer DJ wanted to bring its community together, from global icons to bedroom amateurs. The insight we built on: it is always night somewhere. So we designed a digital home around a 24/7 live stream of DJ sets from anywhere on the planet, turning nightlife into one never-ending global event. It was never built, and that was fine. It showed the brand what it could own. Not the hardware, but the night.
FPS Justice. Change as a campaign.
At Restless Minds I spent three years inside the Belgian Federal Public Service of Justice, where a decade of digital transformation had stalled. Systems, budgets, plans, and nobody moving. So we treated the transformation the way an agency treats a brand: a story, audiences, roles, a future people could actually picture themselves in.
The deadlock broke. Thousands of employees finally knew what they were building toward. And it completed what the other three projects had started: brand thinking doesn't just sell things. It moves organisations.
That is where Vorsprung comes from. Twenty years of learning that the best ideas refuse to stay where they were briefed. The portfolio on this site looks forward. Now you know what it stands on.
Jo Van Grinderbeek