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Vermaat Groep
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A coffee at the office, lunch at the museum, a drink at the airport, dinner at an event. Across the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and France, Vermaat makes sure people can enjoy good food and drinks together, every day. In all those places, people work with their own craft, for their own guests, in their own atmosphere. For us, a lovely challenge: telling all those stories without Vermaat losing itself along the way.
One visual language for every place where Vermaat brings people together.
The question
Over the years, a lot of imagery had been made. By different people, for different purposes. Some of it was beautiful work, but it no longer felt like one Vermaat. The question from the corporate team was actually very simple: what do we look like? And how do we make sure everyone sees it?
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Understand
We didn’t start with a camera, but with looking. Together with the marketing manager and the brand marketeer, we put all the existing imagery on the table. What still works? What can go into the archive? And which images make you recognise Vermaat straight away? The strongest photos turned out to have something in common: they didn’t feel made. Real people, real food, in a real moment. The answer was already there. It just needed writing down.
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Uncover
Then we spent months around the table together, pinning down what makes an image truly Vermaat. Vermaat is personal, inventive, skilled, driven, entrepreneurial and self-minded: a company that wants to lead the way, with a healthy dose of adventure. You had to be able to see that in every photo. That led us to a few simple principles.Capture what happens. Vermaat imagery works the way a magazine photographer does: you follow the moment instead of directing it. No posed smiles, but a chef finishing a plate, a colleague helping a guest, a table raising a glass. A frame that’s slightly off or someone out of focus in the foreground is fine, if it makes the moment more real.Three moments, five subjects. Every image shows at least one of three moments: preparation, presentation or enjoyment. And together, five subjects tell the story of a place: the location, the food, the guests, the employees and the concept.Light and colour as they are. Soft, natural light that shows the warmth of the people and the craft in the food. Colours stay true, nothing gets pumped up, and white is simply white. With one small accent: a pop of colour in an apron, a drink or a dish. Never the lead role, just that little bit of energy.Up close, at eye level. We shoot with lenses that see the way you do, without distortion, and often from the guest’s seat. Food is captured just before the first bite, when it looks its most tempting.Room for design. Vermaat imagery is often combined with text. So wherever we can, we deliberately leave some space in the frame, so a designer can work with it later.
It all came together in the Vermaat Visual Guide: a guide for everyone who photographs for Vermaat, from choosing a lens to editing. So the image is right, whoever is behind the camera.
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Uphold
And then came the best part: making images. Since the guide, we’ve worked for almost every corner of Vermaat, always from the same principles.
For the corporate team, we photograph locations, always with people in them, because that’s when a space comes to life. And we create food photography that shows what’s happening on the plate, and who’s making it. For the events division, we’re there when guests are enjoying themselves, and every year we help shape the new campaign. For the leisure division and La Place, we create imagery that helps them find new colleagues.
Like the Werkenbijvermaat series. The guide is about photography, but the idea works just as well on video: four colleagues at the bar, in an unscripted conversation, with a barman who turns out to be an actor. Nothing directed, everything in the moment.
Sometimes we come up with the concept ourselves, sometimes together with the team. For every assignment, we find the maker from our network who fits best, and they get the guide to take along. However different all those productions are, you see it instantly: this is Vermaat.
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What it brings
Vermaat is now recognisable everywhere: on the website, in a job ad, in the magazine or on Instagram. Every place is different, but you can see straight away that it belongs together.
And the visual language lives inside Vermaat too. Teams know what they want to see and write their briefs from the guide. That makes it easier for us to find the right photographer: we know exactly who fits the question, because the question itself is already so clear. So every production starts in the same place, and the imagery ends up there too.