Anchored by a strong wordmark, Twice Shy’s brand for Tobias van Daal merges cinematic past and present

Where do you begin when designing the identity of a cinematographer? Someone whose portfolio boasts a rich selection of visual imagery, with each frame telling a unique story. With a style that caters to urban, youth-driven audiences, Amsterdam-based cinematographer and MōVI operator Tobias van Daal reached out to multidisciplinary creative studio Twice Shy (a venture by Tarryn Blackwood and Jeroen van den Bogaert) for an elevated portfolio site, something that would help him to stand out in a competitive job market in the entertainment industry. It would need to complement and align with his existing work featuring “vibrant, gritty settings” that resonate with his audience, all while capturing Van Daal’s personality. In early discussions, Van Daal’s inspiration included a lot of simple, blocky wordmarks. Taking this idea a step further, Twice Shy proposed a custom wordmark that blends the characteristics of an icon and a wordmark. “This approach allowed us to position Tobias’ initials as a more iconic composition rather than just three letters, enhancing their impact,” Co-founder and Design Director Jeroen van den Bogaert tells us. “Treating the letters as an icon meant approaching them as a shape – specifically, a single line – and then playing with proportions, such as curves, the ratio between the inside and outside of the letters, the point where they meet, the thickness and width of each element, etc.” With this, they aimed to achieve a balance between non-symmetrical letterforms and a more symmetrical ‘iconic’ design.