One More Turn Studio — home

Remco Bakker, AI-fluent design leader

Portrait of Remco Bakker

Hi, I’m Bakker. Dutch product designer and art director, 20+ years in the game, and these days I work with a team of AI agents. I make stuff people want to come back to.

Let’s create together!

Your turn

Creative direction

Brand & digital

AI-fluent

Presenting

The story

From arcade cabinets to AI agents.

I grew up in the eighties, surrounded by music, art and design way before I knew that’s what it was.

Arcade games, that colorful cube everyone had but nobody could solve… until one more turn and boom, it clicked. Turns out that’s pretty much how I still work. Good stuff rarely happens in one go. You just keep turning.

Then everything went digital and I was right there for it. I was making websites as soon as we were able to. I downloaded my music through Napster and Limewire back when MP3 players were new and later came the iPod, which eventually turned into the iPhone. I wasn’t reading about any of it. I was living it.

It was at the art academy that I really learned how to look and how to turn everything around me and everything I had lived through into inspiration and ideas.

Later I added a bachelor in Communication and Multimedia Design, which taught me how to make it work for the people using it. Since then I’ve designed through more styles than I can count, glossy to flat and back again. It taught me the difference between a trend and a principle: trends fade and good thinking stays.

Now it’s AI and I use it in every step of my process. I build small teams of helper agents that get things done fast, so I can explore further than I ever could before. It’s the tool I’m most curious about right now and everything I picked up along the way helps me tell what’s worth keeping. Curious about what’s new and experienced enough to know the difference.

Fun fact: Bakker is Dutch for baker. And bakers get it too. Ovens never heat perfectly evenly, so halfway through they give the trays a turn. In lots of bakeries the racks just keep turning inside the oven until everything comes out nice and golden.

What I believe

  • Craft still matters, more than ever

    Every tray gets its turn. The little details are where good becomes great.

  • Taste is the one thing you can’t prompt

    We can try a hundred things. Picking the right one? Still my job.

  • Good work is a team sport

    Always co-op mode. Clients, devs, stakeholders, agents, all playing for the same high score.

  • Tools change. Curiosity doesn’t

    Joysticks, mice, AI agents… whatever the tool, I always want to try one more thing.

Remco Bakker presenting his work to an audience

Presenting

Talking about the work, to small groups and big ones. Every conversation makes the next turn better.

Same process.Way more turns.

I’m a mix of product designer and art director. You bring the ingredients: your wishes, your requirements, your big ambitions. In my design bakery, I turn them into brands and products that are easy to use, nice to look at, and leave people wanting just one more go.

And I don’t do it alone. I’ve got a team of AI agents working with me, and they’re always up for another round. They explore, test, try again, so every idea gets way more turns than I could ever give it solo. I just pick the one that’s right.

Human taste. AI speed.

  1. Understand

    With AIFirst, the ingredients. Who’s it for, what’s the market, and what are we actually trying to do?

  2. Define

    With AIThen the recipe. Look at the problem from a bunch of angles, pick the direction worth going for.

  3. Craft

    With AIPrototype first, turn after turn. We try loads of options fast, so the best one gets all the love.

  4. Deliver

    With AIOut of the oven and into the product. Built with real components, ready for the devs, and still open to one more tweak.

Beyond the screen

The guy behind the work,away from the desk.

Remco Bakker crouching on a cobbled square to pet a fluffy cat
Placeholder caption
The stage after the lights come up
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An attentive audience in the front rows

You are the result of your experiences.

Remco Bakker

When I’m not designing, I’m probably traveling, preferably somewhere with a lot of ancient history.

Italy, Greece, Turkey… every street corner there deserves one more turn. Oh, and I’m a big animal lover :-)

Experience

Twenty years, one craft.

Agencies, a startup, a scale-up and everything in between. Every job was another turn, from art direction to leading design teams. Always about making things people enjoy.

  1. 2023 – now

    Design Director

    • Ovivio NL

    Leading design across Ovivio’s portfolio of B2B SaaS products, making design a driver of delivery rather than a bottleneck: clear direction, pragmatic decisions and a sharp focus on where design effort creates the most value. I am responsible for everything design-related at Ovivio, from the brand and the design system to the new platform experience: bringing 15 different products together into one SaaS platform, which makes it a very complex challenge. The goal throughout is to craft stellar SaaS experiences for our childcare platform. I founded and lead the Ovivio Design Guild, mentor designers towards outcomes over polish, and help the team adopt AI tools and workflows.

  2. 2022 – 2023

    Principal Designer

    • DEPT

    DEPT is a global digital agency with thousands of specialists, blending creativity, technology and data for some of the world’s biggest brands. As Principal Designer I was a hands-on design leader on multiple large projects for A-brands, working with stakeholders and agencies around the world and keeping the quality of the work high. My focus was mainly Smart and Merit Circle. For Smart, I co-created the global new brand experience as the brand reinvented itself as an all-electric car brand that sells online: a new visual direction and online identity to help launch its new #1, #3 and #5 cars. For Merit Circle, we created an immersive gaming platform and marketplace for Web3 gamers, from strategy and concept through to design, with the visual identity and gameplay at the heart of it.

  3. 2014 – 2022

    Design Lead

    • Elements + MakerStreet

    Eight years leading the design team of Elements, MakerStreet’s full-service digital agency, as Creative Lead. I moved the organisation from tech-minded to UX-minded, bridged designers, developers and management, and set up the design processes and the pitch work. Along the way I also worked with Soda and Resoluut on different projects. In my last two years I redesigned IRMA (later renamed Yivi), a self-sovereign identity wallet app for SIDN, and made a very technical product usable for everyone.

  4. 2018 – 2020

    Teaching Design Thinking

    • Windesheim

    Design thinking workshops that prepared students for graduation, challenging them to solve real-world problems.

  5. 2017 – 2019

    Co-creator of Easygrow.io

    • Easygrow.io

    A platform that uses sensor data to help urban farmers grow vegetables on demand. Developed with two colleagues, it reached the final round of the FloriadeWerkt! challenge.

  6. 2012 – 2014

    Senior Product Designer

    • YD Group

    UX and UI for Impulse, a real-time bidding platform, as part of the product development team of an innovative startup. It is also where I learned a lot of important frontend coding skills.

  7. 2011 – 2012

    Art Director

    • Gemini Design

    Creative concepts and pitches for new clients, and branding and marketing material for brands like L’Oréal, Vichy and the Dutch Government.

  8. 2008 – 2011

    Art Director

    • P’zaz Amsterdam

    On- and offline work for clients like Yamaha, Dunlop, Sukha and Bugaboo, and responsible for online development.

  9. 2007 – 2008

    Art Director

    • Carmichael & Pilarzcyk

    Concepts and animation plans for television shows like RTL Autowereld and Gek op Wielen, and for new and established brands, while guiding a team of three junior designers.