Partly Egyptian, partly Congolese and partly Dutch; from Amsterdam and Rotterdam, Michael Middelkoop (art) and Sharif Abd el Mawla met during their Media studies at the University of Amsterdam seven years ago. The two friends first worked apart, then together on music videos and TV and film production before officially becoming an advertising team. Starting as interns at Strangelove in Amsterdam, they made a video that we featured back in 2011, celebrating Ajax and Amsterdam. During their next stop at Pool Worldwide they, amongst other projects, created a video for Greenpeace’s Fashion Victims, which also caught our attention. The duo’s latest work is a collaboration with Dutch singer Anouk and insurance company Centraal Beheer. As part of the most recent ‘Even Apeldoorn Bellen’ commercial (uniquely made by Pool and not DDB), they created several short videos, fictionally shot mobile-phone-style to create some rumor around the actual commercial. Here‘s one. The videos show Anouk drunk out of her skull before she wakes up in the actual commercial. This project also marks their farewell to Pool Worldwide. That’s why these talents are “looking for a new pool to swim in“. If you want to learn more about them check out their site, hire them, and make sure we can feature some more work in the future.

Rutger Paulusse (29), or Gwer, is a complete sucker for type. Directly after he finished St. Joost in 2009, an education for graphic design, he started freelancing in Amsterdam. He then moved to New York to work for illustration agency Vault49, and recently moved back to Amsterdam. Though Paulusse especially likes to work with authentic materials, such as pencils, paper and ink, he also works with 3D software. This makes Paulusse a versatile designer, working on all sorts of illustrative typography; from custom lettering to CGI illustrations. One of Paulusse’s most recent jobs, via Ogilvy and Artbox, was making 30 custom ‘word images’ for a campaign for the Ford Ka – some sketches here. Other work of Rutger Paulusse can be found on his website.

The only resemblance between this film and creative team Jan-Willem de Man (art) & Frenkel Schönfeld (copy) is that they have brown and blond hair respectively and did meet in Nerja, close to Malaga in Spain, around April 2001. Oh, and they are both very fond of Spain. When we asked Schönfeld, did you really have that fight, he answered: “No, but we probably both thought the other was a bit of a douchebag. I had a bleach-blond-fail hairdo and Jan-Willem was a preppy adolescent with a Honda SS50. At that point we couldn’t have imagined ending up working together in advertising.” But they did. And still do. They started as a team at CCCP, working on – among other brands – The Dutch Maritime Museum. For this museum they created a take-over on Dutch news site Nu.nl and filled it with ‘Spanified Dutch news’ to show that the Netherlands would probably still be reigned by Spain, if the Dutch hadn’t sailed the seas in the Golden Age. After 3.5 years CCCP, they joined Taxi in 2012, where they still work.

We’re launching a new item on Amsterdam Ad Blog, called ‘Talent of the month.’ The section is for talented people who have the ambition to work in advertising or have just entered the world of advetrising and want to share one of their portfolio ideas. Here’s our first pick; Daniel Disselkoen. He just finished the Royal Academy of Arts in the The Hague, where he conceived the Man-Eater. This video explains how it works. For four years Disselkoen each day took the same tram to the Art Academy. He got bored looking out of the window, seeing more or less the same thing every day. That’s how he came up with the this idea to make his and his fellow passangers’ journey more exciting. Disselkoen ends his e-mail to us with “Man-eater is coming to Amsterdam soon.” Well, we’re looking forward to it.