Portfolio Katja Koggelmann - free and arty projects

Sometimes, just to stay sane during thos endless days of working at agencies, I created projects to work on off duty. Also during my years at the University of Fine Arts of Hamburg I enjoyed the free spirit and used it to test my creative borders. I learned to lead teams, I understood that there is a point, from which on I can stop worrying about design (as it would be good by then) and I learned how I would deal with my very own babies.

In 1999 my best friend and I wondered, why nobody was asking us out on dates. As we realised, we didn't do much ourselves to get closer to love, the idea for a loveschool was born.

At my art school I used to help some people out with their projects. It was always remarcable to work with them as they owned them. So I could get right to the core of what was needed and intended to be able to deliver the appropriate results for them.

Many flyers have been produced by me. I was practically drowned in them. So i desided to stick them all together and cut them. Not I have a paperback book consisting of randomly cut flyers and printed sheets.

While doing my webdesign course we sometimes got small assignments. This here was a website mockup we had to develop for a pan-African charity project.

With a couple of fellow students, parralelly to the usual sutying process, we created a wonderful arty gimmicky magazine. Over about three years we managed to reslease 5 issues.

During one course, led by an urban designer, we challenged the relation between highways and nature. And we crated a quite lovely book.

Last year for Christmas I decided to create a gift brand. I might turn that into a tradition. Sewing, printing, coming upo with the concept and ideas - all of that is as fullfilling as it is meditative for me. Roccococotte is a cheecky translation of baroque silhouettes.

Having had the opportunity to work with all kinds of printing devices at the art school I couldn't resist using them all. It even got quite political at one point, as student protests had to be branded...

In 2003, one of the hottest summers, we had the amazing chance to spend a month in a former Nazi holiday building. It was in fact once the longest building in the world, spanning an area of about 4.5 kilometres along the pretty coast of the island Ruegen in Germany.

In 2007 - parallelly to working as a freelance designer and art director - I finished my art school course with a diploma in visual communication. We practically could do anything. Which I did.

Beau Doyle, a singer and songwriter from Hackney, has got many different bits and pieces all over the web 2.0. During my webdesign course I thought, I could use that as a starting point for some single page websites, bringing those links together.

Having done some projects on my terms, in my time and with varying budgets has tought me by doing more that working at a well organised advertising agency. Learning when an idea has been enough thought about, leading a team of artists, producing when there is no budget at all - priceless!