Dordt Alumni in Design: Taylor Van Kley

Portfolio: 2011 Catalog Cover


ICS (Iowa Cutter Supply) Logo Ideas


Truck Trailer Graphics

We recently asked Taylor Van Kley to be featured as a Dordt alumni working in design. Taylor kindly submitted the following:

I graduated in May of 2005 with a B.A. in Art: Graphic Design. I worked at KSOU Radio before landing my current job at Kooima Company® in February of 2007. Kooima Company is a manufacturing plant located in Rock Valley, Iowa. About 120 people are employed there. One side of their business deals with laser cutting and metal fabricating, and the other side makes agricultural replacement parts. I am the only graphic designer at Kooima Company, so I do designs for both sides of the company even though I am considered a member of the Ag Department.


I use a variety of programs, including the Adobe Creative Suite 5, QuarkXPress, iMovie, and more to make flyers, catalogs, brochures, business cards, signs, semi trailer graphics, and anything else they need designed. The Ag catalog is probably the most time consuming project that I work on. I also do photography and videography for the company. Kooima has two websites, one of which I designed from scratch with HTML. Here’s a link to the website for the laser cutting/job shop side. The Ag Department has their own website and I keep the Ag site updated using a built-in content editor.


Last year, Kooima Company helped another ag business get started. The new business is known as Iowa Cutter Supply, a supplier of used forage harvester parts. I was able to make some designs for them, including a logo (shown above).


Outside of work, I recently finished a new website for my home church (Central Reformed Church in Sioux Center, Iowa). The pastor told me to keep it simple, so that is what I did. You can see it here: www.centralreformed.org. If you would like to see more of my work, please see my portfolio. The site contains a few additional and interesting side projects.