In the Eye of the Beholder

It was only a few years ago that a young artist working at a printing office found herself in need of a new opportunity. Five years later, almost no image is published on our social media channels that hasn’t passed by Christina’s hands.

Indeed, almost exactly five years ago, Christina walked into our offices and decided to stay. But, let’s hit the rewind button for a moment. What was Christina doing at a printing office? “I’ve always loved to work with print. It’s a different feeling to hold your self-made design in your hands.” Ah, yes, and the smell of fresh ink, varsol, and toner can be… intoxicating.

"I had my first interview with one of the old managers and Igor. The funny thing was that it all went very fast. They were very excited and, during the first interview, they actually already showed me around the office as if it was a done deal! After that, it didn’t take long and I signed a one-year contract and almost immediately start working there.

“I remember the first day I sat next to Bart, to see what work I was going to do because that was still a bit unclear back then,” Christina laughs.

Christina makes it sound like she literally just walked in through the door, shook a couple of hands, and then sat at her new desk. Perhaps she was wearing that irresistible Ink de toilette, but more likely than not, she was probably exuding passion, confidence, and eagerness. And a very good portfolio.

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“I eventually started out working on the games with Bart. We had to figure out a cohesive style for it, one that we could do both. I remember we were making dioramas for the Habtic app as well, which were little scenes that were hand-drawn with pixels and voxels.” While pixel art wasn’t Christina’s cup of tea, the next style totally was: vector art. “I’m very grateful that I got to explore a lot of styles and techniques when I started, this gave me a sense of what I did see myself doing in the future, and also what I definitely didn’t want to do in the future.”

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From here, we evolved into creating animations, and while Christina also contributed to this work for a little while, she found something that was an even better fit for her at Dephion. “Balou was setting up social media and external communication. I really wanted to help her with taking the best pictures and finding the best ways to visually please the audience. That’s when I saw that I had a lot more passion for doing these things; taking pictures and making graphics to communicate certain messages to people. This felt like the work I always wanted to do!”

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Throughout these five years, Christina grew and matured into exactly the kind of artist she wanted to become. “I had a lot of chances to discover my path within Dephion. You’re allowed to make mistakes and start over, the learning curve was enormous because of this. It also felt like I learned a lot from my coworkers."

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"Kim taught me everything about animations and how the whole process works. In the time we worked together, we became inseparable and became close friends. David helped me with all the branding stuff and always gave me a different pair of eyes and insight.

“Ruud is always giving me the opportunity to help on every project that contains Powerpoint or Word.” Christina laughs (She laughs even though some of us have gone bald trying to insert a single graphic in Word). “No, but seriously, you can ask him everything and he will always stay calm, even when stressing out about a big printing project. He is always there for the difficult questions.

“And of course, Balou has been a great sparring partner and I believe we help each other a lot by giving different perspectives we often need. She also gave me the chance to explore this new passion I developed for pictures and creating visuals for internal and external communication purposes.

“My relationship with my coworkers has always been very good. From the moment I started working at Dephion I always considered many Dephioneers as my friends.”

Christina has explored multiple forms of art. From printed formats to pixel to vector to animation, and now to photography and graphic communication. But no matter what style or tools she uses, it is her eye that first beholds the beauty of her creations.

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