Jordi Romkema

From their classic Beatnuts albums like Intoxicated Demons, Street Level & Stone Crazy, Take It or Squeeze It, to the underground smashes like Al Tariq's God Connections and Missin Linx's Exhibit A EP, the trio has always been a favorite amongst Hip-Hop fans. Psycho Les, a Hip-Hop veteran and producer extraordinaire, has a production record not to be overlooked, boasting classic Beatnuts production credits like: Off The Books, Watch Out Now, and No Escapin This. Al Tariq aka Fashion, although some may not know, was a founding member of The Beatnuts and played an important role in the group's first 3 Albums. In 1998, he left the group to pursue a solo career, so this recent formation of Big City is the unofficial reunion of Tariq and Les since the late '90s. Most remember Problemz as a member of the group Missin Linx, as his lyrical double time flow is reminiscent of The Golden Era of Hip-Hop. Read the rest... »

On April 30th MTV Networks launched the new television channel Comedy Central. Due to the success in the United States and the recent successful launches in Poland and Germany, Comedy Central can now also be seen in The Netherlands. Comedy Central airs as of April 30th between 8 pm and 2 am and replaces the channel The BOX Comedy, which in turn replaced The BOX. Read the rest... »

As of December 1st 2006 The BOX no longer exists. Due to the shifting of channels by owner MTV Networks and Talpa in The Netherlands the channel no longer airs 24 hours a day but now shares a channel with kids entertainment channel Nickelodeon, also owned by MTV Networks. Nickelodeon airs until 20:00 and after that The BOX Comedy takes over with an all comedy programming. The interactive music video request system The BOX was known for disappears completely and from now on the channel airs comedies such as Chappelle’s Show, South Park and Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air. Read the rest... »

In the small town of Lisse in The Netherlands lies Chinese Specialty restaurant Dragon Town. This beautifully decorated restaurant is known by all the food loving in the region and far beyond. Even when it comes to fast and friendly service and excellent prices Dragon Town has a strong reputation. Read the rest... »

On July 13th Dutch television channel The BOX launched their new website. With this site The BOX hopes to give their viewers more creative control of the television channel. The BOX main music genres are Hip-Hop, R&B, Classics, Dance & Reggea and viewers can request video's on television through SMS text messaging, phone or, with the introduction of this new website, also online. I was responsible for most of the technical aspects of the website. In other words: the technical concept, design, development, incorporating existing applications and the technical realization of the new sites. Besides these technical duties I was also responsible for the graphic design. Read the rest... »

The BOX , a television channel in The Netherlands, airs besides music video’s also shows such as Chappelle’s Show, South Park, The BOX News, Moccah and a lot more. Some of these shows are available for online viewing in the brand new video-on-demand service BOXBlaster. This free online streaming video application plays video’s in the Windows Media format. The controls of the player (such as the play/pause buttons, volume switches, etc.) were made in Flash. Flash and Windows Media Player ‘talk’ to each other through the ExternalInterface in Flash and Javascript. Read the rest... »

With this website I was able to present my work to the public, as I do with the current website. However this one was still in Dutch. I tried to update as much as possible but there was no content management system behind it. So whenever I felt like updating I had no access to update and when I was at home I didn’t feel like updating it anymore. That was a big flaw for me and it was time to upgrade. What I personally liked about the site is the stylesheet switcher. With just one click you can have a whole different set of colors and graphics. Read the rest... »

The Blazz is the ultimate combination between an online magazine and a community focused on Hip-Hop music. There is loads of information to be found about Dutch and International Hip-Hop artists and bands, interviews, reviews with lots of audio and video to accompany it with. The site is updated daily with the latest news. For The Blazz I created the design for their website and their forum. The design was also transferred to CSS & XHTML by me.

Visit The Blazz at www.theblazz.com

The new website for Dutch music video channel TMF (The Music Factory) is primarily focused on Music but also connects seamlessly to the media experience and communication patterns of the modern day youth. They’re able to watch live to TMF while they’re chatting in the same screen. The extensive video library has also expanded. This means visitors can view shows such as Gamekings, Movie Facts and Winterbase online. They have more control of what they’re watching online because they can choose what they see online, a specific artist or only music video’s in a specific genre. The TMF ID members also have the opportunity to create their own music video playlist. Read the rest... »

Finkelbaum

The sock is the most underestimated piece of clothing on earth and Finkelbaum is going to change this. Finkelbaum sells a self-made line of socks, each having a different design. The socks are only sold online through the Finkelbaum website. The socks are high quality and made in Italy with the best materials available.

For Finkelbaum I arranged the online store and implemented the design made by Artmiks (Image Builders).

Lipton Ice Tea

This is a small microsite for a summer campaign by Lipton ice Tea in coorperation with TMF. Visitors that bought a bottle of Lipton Ice Tea Sparkling, Sparkling Light or Green obtained a unique code that they could enter on the website and get access and download exclusive summer hit ringtones.

10 jaar TMF

The year 2005 marks the 10 year anniversary of TMF. TMF was the first music video channel in the Netherlands and the whole month of October there were special airings of television programs dedicated to this 10 year anniversary with (ex) VJ’s and music artists.

A special microsite was built where visitors could find inforation about these special airings and they were able to vote for their favorite music video. Also it was possible to enter in a special competition where they could win their own television performance and interview their favorite artist. My job was to implement the design and building the interactivity such as the voting process.

CSS Zen Garden

CSS Zen Garden is a demonstration of what can be accomplished visually through CSS-based design. There are hundreds of different designers that modified the design of CSS Zen Garden with just CSS and without adjusting the HTML file which, to me, is pretty impressive.

I already participated in the past but thought it would be fun to participate again with a completely different design than the first one. You can view this design at CSS Zen Garden.

TMF op 9

Television channel TMF exists 10 years and since the beginning of its existence the channel always had the number 9 in the bug in the upper right corner of the television screen. Which is primarly used as a marketing tool so that people will program their television so that the channel TMF will be under number 9 on their remote control. A few years ago this number 9 has left the bug on the screen. Discovery Channel saw the opportunity to claim the number 9 and started a campaign where viewers could win a Land Rover Discovery if they would reprogram their television and put Discovery on number 9. The nerve! Time for retaliation…

TMF has also started a campaign and doesn’t give one person just one car, but nine completely tuned cars. A complete fleet of cars, complete with a built-in PlayStation and DVD navigation system.

Viewers are asked to submit addresses where they put TMF on channel 9 through a form on the website. The one on top at the end of the campaign will win the grand prize. The whole campaign is supported with recurring promos on the television channels owned MTV Networks (TMF, MTV & The BOX) and with special episode of the program Play with VJ Miljuschka.

An early version of the design that evolved in the final version.

Jor-On v6

An earlier version of this site, back when the site was still called Jor-On: a combination of my first name (Jordi) and the word Online. Kind of geeky, I know… I wanted this site to be different from all the other sites that were created with CSS and developed the site in a cowboy and western theme. Some people thought it was too over the top and didn’t fit on a designer’s website. Others thought it was great and applauded the fact that it was totally different from the rest. The site was made in 3D Studio Max, Photoshop, Illustrator and the necessary CSS/XHTML/PHP/MySQL combinations. Because it was a unique design the site landed in a couple of CSS galleries as an object for more discussion (CSS Vault, CSS Thesis, CSS Drive, etc.). The site is not online anymore since it’s replaced by this site but you can still view a screenshot below: