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Mike Van Wyk
Owner / Manager at applegrapple which involves highly creative and technical photographic manipulation as well as design finishing for various print reproduction processes. I have over 20 years experience in the print and advertising creative graphics industry.
Show profile Hide profileI started my career in 1982 at Unifoto (Pty) Ltd where under the Gunter Zimmerman management who instilled excellent colour management principals and photolithographic skills preparing high quality magazines and coffee table books through state of the art pre-press systems - Hell scanners and Scitex layout computers (Pre-Mac!). This gave me the solid foundation which was useful once Apple Macintosh entered the print arena. I then joined Independent Newspapers - Sparhams Cape. It was at Sparhams I was introduced to the advertising industry. Sparhams then handled huge quantities of local big brand advertising campaigns. During this period Sparhams trained Scitex layout artists on the Macs. I had read about the Macs at Unifoto and knew that this would change the face of how pre-press was managed in the near future. At Sparhams I was involved in layout, retouching, corrections, dealing with clients running in with last minute changes and all the pit-falls that clients fell into head over heels. Lovely pictures on screen but not press ready. At this point I moved directly into working for a small advertising agency. This allowed me to use all the knowledge I had gained within a creative environment and using my creative flare - I had studied art (painting, print making and drawing) at school and fine art at the Ruth Prowse School of Art before Unifoto. The years I'd spent at Orange Marketing and then ORD Advertising working on a variety of retail clients such as Shoprite and Brandhouse advertising projects honed my creative skills and prepared me for the next step which was freelancing for other growing advertising agencies such as Ching Chong Chow, Joe Public to mention a few.
This finally lead to me casting of the salary 'mooring rope' to start my own finished art studio - applegrapple - in 1998. Applegrapple offers the client a full range of dedicated skills and personnel attention to each project briefed. the object is to deliver the very best to each project that enters my studio. I am small, focused and creatively nimble. The same skills and attention to detail that I learned in 1982 are need today, the only difference being that the technology has improved vastly which makes the job so much more a pleasure.
I started my career in 1982 at Unifoto (Pty) Ltd where under the Gunter Zimmerman management who instilled excellent colour management principals and photolithographic skills preparing high quality magazines and coffee table books through state of the art pre-press systems - Hell scanners and Scitex layout computers (Pre-Mac!). This gave me the solid foundation which was useful once Apple Macintosh entered the print arena. I then joined Independent Newspapers - Sparhams Cape. It was at Sparhams I was introduced to the advertising industry. Sparhams then handled huge quantities of local big brand advertising campaigns. During this period Sparhams trained Scitex layout artists on the Macs. I had read about the Macs at Unifoto and knew that this would change the face of how pre-press was managed in the near future. At Sparhams I was involved in layout, retouching, corrections, dealing with clients running in with last minute changes and all the pit-falls that clients fell into head over heels. Lovely pictures on screen but not press ready. At this point I moved directly into working for a small advertising agency. This allowed me to use all the knowledge I had gained within a creative environment and using my creative flare - I had studied art (painting, print making and drawing) at school and fine art at the Ruth Prowse School of Art before Unifoto. The years I'd spent at Orange Marketing and then ORD Advertising working on a variety of retail clients such as Shoprite and Brandhouse advertising projects honed my creative skills and prepared me for the next step which was freelancing for other growing advertising agencies such as Ching Chong Chow, Joe Public to mention a few.
This finally lead to me casting of the salary 'mooring rope' to start my own finished art studio - applegrapple - in 1998. Applegrapple offers the client a full range of dedicated skills and personnel attention to each project briefed. the object is to deliver the very best to each project that enters my studio. I am small, focused and creatively nimble. The same skills and attention to detail that I learned in 1982 are need today, the only difference being that the technology has improved vastly which makes the job so much more a pleasure.
