Design Vittorpia
Victor Alonso Boshuizen is CEO of Design Vittorpia, a company offers branding consulting in the space of social media to people, their ideas and businesses. In addition, they created The Decoy Fund, an initiative to empower the projects of other entrepreneurs and startups in the #gaming community need that first financial push. We have conducted an interview with Victor.
I’m determined to prove that quantity does not and will never be the same as quality. In the social media era numbers have become a determining factor to measure someone’s “success”. That is if you have X amount of followers, therefore your word is gospel and can call yourself a “Brand Evangelist”, a “Thought Leader” and so on. To me this prioritization of numbers and quantity has a negative impact. It has undermined the value to the client by professionals, who lack the experience and expertise in design principles and compliance, who then sell unrealistic services to misinformed crowds who think their investment is well placed.
Damage is done and quality will suffer, giving an opportunity to resources like me to come in; Graphic Designers have become the experts to be hired to assess, reevaluate and deploy an effective program.
When clients realize their marketing strategy was in the hands of people who lacked knowledge on intellectual property, copyright, proper formatting of photographs to display, and content development, 80% of the time they then have a negative reaction that results on unrealistic expectations. In turn, they are hoping a professional, such as myself, can fix the mistake quickly.
With proper research, understanding real branding, and considering credentials, they would save time and budget. Falling into the trap of ‘quantity = success’ clients prolong the status quo of expensive brand consultants and poor branding.
What kind of branding challenges do you consider is the easiest to handle?
Vision has always been the easiest challenge of a branding project to me as I am capable of seeing ahead into the future and predict good trends, innovation and ideas that can be incorporated into my client’s project. For others, I have seen the lack of long-term vision.
I have also come to learn, after ten years in the industry, I’m very good at socializing concepts, theories and strategy as graphic designer in a way that is not overly-complex and abstract.
Today’s world gives us only fifteen seconds of attention and I have mastered ways in which I can capture that window and offer great solutions to meet the clients’ needs.
Which is one of your core strengths and what is your background? What makes you ideal to be engaged for your brand consultancy?
I always treat every single project my company works on as though it is my sole project to work on. I believe the success of my client after hiring my branding services is the best form of payment I could possibly have as it assures me I have the right set of skills to empower others.
My background is multi-cultural and multi-disciplinary as I grew up in over seven different countries, speak four languages and have always been in love with visual communications. Like a chameleon, I can mix and blend different approaches with my designs to appeal a broader audience.
As millennial, I grew up with technology and have been evolving alongside these tools, which means I have had the privilege to test, experiment via “trial and error” and discover new methodologies. While sensible to those more traditional clients want to use proactive solutions.
What makes Design Vittorpia unique is how we adapt: Our ideas aren’t necessarily two-dimensional, our diverse thinking and “out of the box” mentality is used to create unique, unusual solutions for clients. Coupled with the fact that even as CEO I always invest in every project to give it that first push to show clients a glimpse of the possibilities that could be reached. The coveted, “what it could be!”
Years in the industry have yielded routines and procedures we use in service lines to guarantee the best quality and approach to turning a brand into an engaging voice in the social media space.
What is "The Decoy Fund"? Who is it for and how can someone apply for it?
How many game apps or startups have you worked with? What is your depth of experience in the #gaming field?
An example how Design Vittorpia gives form and creates solutions inspired purely from social media can be seen on The Decoy Fund.
This is an investment initiative launched in 2013 alongside its own Twitter Page (@IllidanDecoy) focuses on connecting gamers in the social media community. The page shares good content, quality interaction as well as updates from the Blizzard-Games-Universe while chronicling the very online lives of these players in a way that hasn’t ever been done before, in real time and using their own voices.
My team of curators and I found out a number of players were actually working on projects at the starting stage using Twitter to gather market interest on their idea. Most of these projects are DIY covering a broad spectrum from streaming on Twitch.tv to selling custom illustrations via online shops like, Etsy.
The program gives people a monthly stipend to cover their budgets to improve, launch and market their idea and turn this into reality. In addition, we offer free branding advice and services to help projects look more professional, especially when joining pages like PATREON to seek even a broader group of investors.
The Decoy Fund currently works with twenty-four different startups such as Tsepish Illustrations, Sleeping Fox on Deviant Art, Fused Guild (Ranked Top Fifty in the United States), Vodka Guild (Ranked Top Ten in the United States), TimmyFrey TV (Iraq War Veteran streams on Twitch.tv member of the Operation Supply Drop) having invested a total of $25,000 in 2015.
As of February 2016, we have seven new startups have applied.
There are no limitations as to who is eligible to be part of The Decoy Fund and our application is simple requiring the author to e-mail an outline describing the project, goal(s) to reach, and list of benefits for the community at large.
Design Vittorpia’s Curatorial Team is made of professionals are avid gamers with over a decade of experience on PC and consoles. Our company has participated in every single Alpha and Beta test for expansions in World of Warcraft as well as leading the conversations in communities include, Pokémon, The Sims and Mortal Kombat.
The Decoy Twitter Page (@IllidanDecoy) was named ‘Most Social’ at Blizzcon 2014 as we covered live all updates including interviews with attendees and giveaways.
