Hello world!
My name is Charles-Axel Pauwels, and I'm from Belgium. This is just a little presentation website. First of all, if you want to contact me, use the links above. And don't hesitate to contact me if you have any question, I'll answer as soon as possible!
Now, what's there to tell about me? If you are looking for my CV and works, just continue on reading. If you're more interested in who I am, clicking here will bring you straight to the point.
My CV information
After reading this, please don't stop and continue on reading, you'll learn more about my works and who I am!
Schooling
- 2010 - now | Bachelor in Industrial Design Engineering at the Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands
- 2008 - 2010 | Bachelor in Aerospace Engineering at the Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands
- Summer 2009 | Summer course in Product Design at Parsons The New School for Design University in New York, USA
- Summer 2008 | Summer course in Design And Management at Parsons The New School for Design University in New York, USA
- 2002 - 2008 | High School - Latin and Maths specialisation at the Lycee Emile Jacqmain in Brussels, Belgium
Jobs
- 2009 - now | Webdesigner for Debailleul
- 2005 - now | Infographist for Debailleul (e.g. packaging and catalogues realisation - contact me for samples)
Knowledge
- Spoken and written languages | French, Dutch, English and a very basic Chinese
- Software | Mac, Windows, Web, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign, Adobe Flash, Office
- Programming languages | XHTML & CSS, PHP, MySQL, Java, Python
Works I have realized
Debailleul.com | 2009-2010
At the end of 2009 I had the task to rebuild the www.debailleul.com website. The former website was 100% flash, and the company that delivered the website couldn't maintain it anymore. I worked with the Debailleul company to build the website back from scratch with HTML, CSS, PHP and MySQL technologies instead of Flash, ASP, and MSSQL.
The work was done in about one month, and I had to work with a tight deadline to have the website up and running before the holiday season.
Charles-Axel managed to rewrite our website structure from flash to php in record time. In addition to this, he created from scratch up a database allowing us to change and update our website files very quickly and efficiently.
Great work and happy to be of be of assistance to anyone who may require additional information.
Besides having rebuilt the visible part of the website, I've built a CMS system to manage all the content of the debailleul.com website so that editing the website doesn't require hours of work.
In 2010 I'll develop an eCommerce website for the Debailleul company.
QuickAdd iPhone App | 2009
Quickly add the people you meet to your favorite social network.
A personnal project to learn how to make iPhone applications. The purpose of the application is to quickly be able to follow someone you meet on twitter or add them as a friend on facebook. This is my vision of how it should happen: an uncluttered app that's designed to do one thing, do it fast and easily. Because when you meet people, you don't want to spend 5 minutes figuring out how to add their contact information on your favorite social network. I haven't released the application on the App Store, but if you are interested I can make it available, just contact me!
1url.tw | 2009
The 1url.tw [not existing anymore] project started as a way to change how URL shorteners work. URL shorteners shrink long links in a much shorter variant, and is very useful for twitter because you have a 140 characters limit on what you want to share.
The problem was that those services (bit.ly, tinyurl.com, ...) only allowed to shorten a single link. What if you want to share several links in a tweet? Impossible. That's why I worked on developping my own service. Besides from sharing only links, you can upload pictures too. Once you've added all the links and media you want to share, you use a single link you share with the world, pointing to a webpage listing all the links in a clear way.
That's for the base concept, a lot of advanced options were included too, like the ability to theme the page the link points to, or change the short link to your convinience. The website went throught 2 designs, but never became popular due to a lack of time on my side to make it known.
ddnlejeu.com - Donjon de Naheulbeuk - Le Jeu | 2004-2007
This is first project I undertook, at age 14. It was quite ambitious, and I've spent a countless amount of hour working on it. The Donjon de Naheulbeuk - Le Jeu is a video game for PCs. It's based upon a popular french MP3 audio adventure. This is like a TV show, but only with sound. I've used the story, characters, and designed the world described in the audio adventure. I gave a visual image to the Donjon de Naheulbeuk, which pleased lots of people. The first version of the game which only included the first episode of the first season, was an immediate success, and with within days of launching the website getting about 200 downloads daily. For a 14 year old kid this was quite cool! I've worked 3 full years on the project, finishing season one of the adventure, and leaving the task of continuing the development (season 2) to a bunch of French guys motivated to continue what I've started. Still now hundreds of people download the game (that's 6 years after the start!).
Working on this project I learned a countless amount of things, from how to manage expectations from thousands of people waiting eagerly for an update of the game, manage a community of fans, learing how to program (even though the game was designed with RPG Maker XP, I learned a lot that helped me learn "real" programming languages afterwards), to online advertisement which let me earn money on a free game (and a lot for a 14year-old kid).
Who am I?
So you want some more info about who I am? Well I'm 19 years old, and studying Industrial Design Engineering at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. I live there during the week, when I have college, and go back to Brussels, Belgium every week-end to see my family and friends. I speak three languages: Dutch, French and English, and as you might have seen from my works, I'm also a webdesigner. That's for the formal stuff.
Now what are my passions? There are 2-3 (actually a lot more) things I really like. The first is probably quite obvious, and it's everything linked with new technology. The internet, computers, gadgets and alike. Everything ranging from the newest hardware to the new social networks spark my interest. New leaps in science are also guaranteed to get my attention! But even though it seems like I'm only doing that when you see this website, I assure you that's just an impression. There're a lot of topics I like to discuss about.
View Countries I've been to in a larger map
An other thing I really enjoy in life is traveling. I've visited nearly all continents except for Oceania. Here's a list of the countries I've been to (or are going to) outside of Europe: The US, Mexico, Brazil, Morocco, Turkey, Sri Lanka, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Japan and China (summer 2011).
My favorite place is New York, where I spent quite some time in the past couple of years (12 weeks). That's because I followed a summer course in Design and I've made quite a few friends there.
Now a passion I got from my mother who is fashion designer. No it's not fashion. Even though I like being well dressed, it's not a real passion. In the last few years I've been really interested in Design, which is for me the art of making objects desirable and good looking (think Apple), but also the art of making objects that are enjoyable to use! This has become such a passion that in the fall of 2010 I stopped studying Aerospace Engineering to study Industrial Design Engineering (which is Engineering and Design).
If you're wondering why I put a chair as a picture for this paragraph, it's because I beleive that this chair, made by Thonet, is the first appearance of modern design.
If you are more interested in what designs I like, I recommend you visit my Fancy page, a social network for all things beautiful!
Apart from music, which I mostly enjoy live, I'm fond of movies. I've seen a countless amount of movies, very good ones and very bad ones. And I guess you're going to want to know what my favorite one is, and well, I don't know! I just can't tell, but I can recommend you a movie, a movie I'm sure not a lot of people have seen, because it's a Danish movie. It's not listed in the IMDB top 250, but it's well worth watching: Adam's Apples. Enjoy!
Now yet an other passion I discovered recently, and is also a legacy of my mother: photography. I've tried several times to get into it, and after having tried several cameras (compact cameras, DSLR reflex cameras, ...), I found the perfect camera for me (the Panasonic GF1). And now I'm learning, and I have to admit i'm really enjoying it!
I love going out from time to time and having a good beer. Oh and by the way I love beer, my favorite one being a Westmalle Tripel, or perhaps a Karmeliet Tripel, and Leffe is great too! I guess living in Belgium, the beer country, doesn't really help... Anyway, if it's for drinking a beer, I'm always in!
What about music? Well I unfortunately I don't play an instrument, but I really enjoy going to live gigs. This ranges from the jazzy concert in a bar, to huge techno parties with tens of thousands dancing people.
So if you have any kind of questions, or just want to follow me on twitter (follow @cpauwels), add me as a friend on facebook, or email me, please do so! My contact links are on the top of the page!