About us

This post is available in deutsch, english and nederlands.

Mission
We are specialized in Visual Communication: we understand the consumer. We observe the society and the market. With the help of our methodology and research we translate what we see into styles and values. We do this for brands, for organizations and for product and interior design.

Vision
Our vision on visual communication is to clarify how differences in time and in day-to-day society communicate. We think design works better when it is based on a clear visual language, which has its roots in content and in form. We help to translate that content into styles and values.

In our vision we love to see design that connects, not polarizes. That’s why we designed our methodologies and research in a way that they can help in laying the fundament for a brand. We translate the spirit of the present time into styles and values and in this way help to make transparent what is happening around us and why.

This also helps us to understand developments in society and in the market better. In other words: understanding through seeing. With our devices we help clients finding ration behind emotions.

We make the various layers in society and in the market transparent: by looking, by observing. With these insights we help to govern and manage design, based on styles and values – that is what we mean by understanding the consumer, by understanding through seeing.

Profile Mieke de Bock
How people consume has always fascinated me; it is at the heart of my interests. Why do people buy what they buy? How do they make their product choices? And how do they identify themselves with their choice? There’s more to this than “there’s no accounting for taste”. That’s the reason why I wanted to get the answers to those questions out of the emotional realm and into the rational one. In that way I wanted to make that saying “there’s a lot to be learned about taste”.

The first (self)analysis of trends I made during my education at the Academy for Industrial Design in Eindhoven and interior architecture at the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. I asked myself: do I have a (or: the) good taste?
Both during my education and during my first job – from 1971 to 1974 I was a stylist at HEMA department store – I became interested in the difference in needs for a specific style.

That’s how I started my quest in trying to explain these differences. That’s how what I now call my “visual language” came into being. Until 2007 this visual language consisted of eight style tools for style analysis. During the past years several new tools have been added.

During the transition from the 80s to the 90s of the past century we added the research for values to our research on styles. This is how the De Bock Barometer became the De Bock & Dekker model.
Ever since, I try to connect my annual style prognosis to the changes in values. However, that connection is often being made after my lectures or on behalf of professional market research.

This never changed my biggest hobby: looking for new styles and values in a very early stage in word or pictures. Sometimes this is just a little word, but it can also be a change in color, in form, in design or in materials used. Sometimes long before this actually becomes an atmosphere of it own or a theme.

Network

We work in a network of closely related agencies:

Clients
Some clients that De Bock & Dekker works for.

Auping (beds)
Bedding House (bed textiles)
Triodos Bank
Espeq

Deutsche Steinzeug (Jasba – Agrobuchtal: tiles)
Keramag (sanitary equipments)
WMF (everything for dinner table and kitchen)
SieMatic (kitchens)