Kenneth Vanoverbeke on designing daily and finding inspiration at the supermarket

“I got into graphic design through Tumblr in my younger years,” Kenneth Vanoverbeke, a graphic design student from Leopoldsburg, Belgium tell It’s Nice That. It was here he realised he had a desire to go into the creative world, constantly updating his page with a mixture of “hip-hop fashion, haute couture and minimalistic graphic design,” sparking a fascination with typography and graphic elements that carries through to his work today.

Kenneth still uses the internet as a platform to share his work and find inspiration, currently uploading daily to his Instagram account. “Staying productive is something everyone should always be striving for, even if it’s something small or silly” he explains. As he’s still searching for his own style, pushing himself to constantly be designing and creating “makes that search easier”.

In order to keep on top of this rigorous routine, Kenneth has a simple but interesting process. All of his posters are a mix of typography and graphic elements incorporating illustration and sometimes animation. Both the text and the visuals are entirely based upon something he’s seen during the day: “after school or in my spare time I sit down and try and remember what stuck with me. Those things I write down or try and sketch in Photoshop so that I don’t forget any ideas and can continue later on.” This forces him to work quickly and without hesitation, learning every day from the mistakes of yesterday. He told us how “sometimes afterwards, I notice something was placed wrong or a certain typeface didn’t mix well so I learn from it. Mistakes are my biggest reward.”

His inspirations are largely a product of his teenage interests – fashion, hip-hop and sneaker culture as well as rappers like Travis Scott and A$ap Rocky and the current generation of Soundcloud artists. He also watches a lot of anime in his spare time, stating Japanese graphic design blog Gurafiku as his go-to spot. However, he believes being open minded is an essential quality for a designer. “When you’re uploading daily, you don’t always feel the most inspired. There are good days and there are bad days,” he told us going on to explain how it’s his ability to keep an open mind that means he can find inspiration almost anywhere: “for example, the other day I got inspired by a certain typeface and its composition on a bag at my local supermarket.”

This experimental and spontaneous approach means that Kenneth’s work is improving at a rapid rate. “Motion graphics is my next big thing at the moment,” he explains, adding that he’s “only been using After Effects for about a month and I’m still learning the basics but I’m horribly passionate about getting better.” His goal as a designer is to utilise the chaos caused by his experimental nature and organise it in order to make engaging compositions, however “obviously that doesn’t happen as often as I would want it to,” Kenneth jokes.