About Me

Willem Paul Van Lancker
2 College Street #1710
Providence, RI 02903
United States

I am a graphic designer and writer currently completing my BFA in Graphic Design at Rhode Island School of Design. In addition to my studies at RISD, I have balanced my academic workload with a concentration in business and entrepreneurship at Brown University. Throughout my time at RISD and Brown, I have become increasingly interested and well versed in the interactions of design and business and how design can transcend simple image-making and become an engine to drive business strategy. My academic pursuits have led to partnerships with MIT Sloan School of Management, MIT Engineering, Brown University Economics, Stanford Graduate School of Business and the Stanford d.school.

My work at RISD has also included the promotion of integrative and experiential leadership and education between Brown, RISD, and Providence, RI. With a team of eight students I organized and managed A Better World by Design, RISD and Brown's international conference on collaborative design for social and environmental responsibility. The event spawned the formation of a new non-profit, Revolution x Design, to create a more sustainable foundation for these ideas in the local educational community.

This spring I am focusing my senior degree thesis on the future of design education through research, writing, and community action. For the past two months I have been serving as a student representative and researcher for the Core Academic Group of RISD's new strategic planning effort. More on my thesis project can be found here.

My varied interests have led to an entrepreneurial passion for collaborative design, human interaction, and the function of organizations. I have worked for adidas’ sport licensed brand design division creating strategic brand redesigns for NHL and MLS professional sports teams. I recently finished an internship at Apple Inc. as an interaction designer working on projects including iPhone and Mac OS X Snow Leopard, among others.