ARTEFCKD / THE TOMB

A real-world photo and video filter built from a dying 2013 MacBook.

Digital submissions pass through one physical machine and are filmed from its failing screen using an iPhone 6 and a Google Nexus. Each result becomes a unique digital artefact.

View the collected results here .
Send something through THE TOMB here .

Concept · Art Direction · Code · Interface · Hardware · Launch

Pretty Lush! / Work by Chris Lochmann

I make brands, objects, publications and digital systems.

Some begin as products.
Some begin as personal problems.
Some begin as things that should not exist,
but somehow need to.

I founded VANTALE® in 2017 and sold the brand in 2025.

I still run Milchglas-Media , a certified DVD and Blu-ray Disc authoring studio for selected clients.

With nonod® , I am developing a new in-house brand around a single object: a 50-litre duffle bag made from X-Pac VX21.

Earlier work includes Vindora , an alpine ambient app for Apple TV.

I work with code, writing, photography, materials and prototypes to turn ideas into things people can enter, use and remember.

Brand Strategy · Product Development · Writing · Photography · Code · Prototyping

VANTALE® / Brand Building

I learned that a niche product does not need everyone. It needs the right people to care.

I founded VANTALE® in 2017 around a product that was difficult to explain and barely had a category of its own.

So I stopped thinking only about the product. I built a world around it — its language, imagery, product names, stories, rituals and the way customers experienced the brand.

Over the following years, thousands of customers became part of that world. People returned, recommended the products and recognised the brand long before they saw the logo. Even parts of its language and product naming began to travel through the category.

VANTALE taught me how trust is built around a small business: not by trying to reach everybody, but by giving a specific group of people something they want to belong to.

I sold the brand in 2025. What stayed with me was the method: build more than a product. Build the world that makes the product matter.

Founder · Brand Strategy · Product Development · Naming · Art Direction · Photography · Community · E-Commerce

Camping Sucks / Interactive Brand World

Two modes. One obvious choice.

CAMPING SUCKS began as an apparel brand, but the joke was always larger than a shirt.

COMFORT MODE keeps things dry, quiet and close to a proper bed and bathroom. TRIAL MODE sends the player outside and turns bad sleep, limited resources and unnecessary discomfort into a playable experience.

The project translates the identity of CAMPING SUCKS into an interactive system. Instead of explaining why camping sucks, it lets people play it.

Concept · Game Design · UX · Writing · Art Direction · Creative Coding · Brand Extension

Camping Sucks / In-house Brand

An apparel project about the less romantic side of van life.

I started Camping Sucks in 2025, shortly after selling VANTALE®.

The identity, online shop and first series of ironic, iconic pieces are almost ready.

Concept · Naming · Brand Identity · Apparel Design · Online Shop

Photography / Text / Typography

Yeah, make it pretty lush!

I photograph with a Fujifilm X100F and combine imagery, typography and language inside a single frame.

Sometimes one image is enough to establish a feeling, a voice and an entire world.

Photography · Art Direction · Typography · Copy

The Internet Is Beautiful

Make it art.

I grew up with the old web and still prefer websites that feel as though somebody actually made them.

I use code, connected objects and imperfect technology to build projects that people can enter, use or disturb.

Creative Coding · Web Design · Connected Objects · Digital Experiments

ARTEFCKD / Self-hosted Art Network

A place for the digital things that never found a place.

ARTEFCKD is an invitation-based network of personal, self-hosted rooms for digital artefacts: screenshots, fragments, sketches, images, texts, abandoned ideas and project debris.

Every room lives on its own server and gradually becomes an archive of the person behind it. There are no likes, followers, comments or algorithms. Nothing needs to perform.

WRECKAGE connects the rooms and lets visitors drift from one personal archive into another.

Every room is its own archive.
WRECKAGE is the door between them.

Enter ARTEFCKD .

Concept · Naming · Art Direction · System Design · UX · Code · Network Architecture

Brand Epitaph / Publication

A founder’s autopsy of a product brand.

BRAND EPITAPH is a publication about VANTALE®, the product brand I founded in 2017 and sold in 2025.

It looks back at the distance between what a product means to its creator and what the market is able to see. It is about freedom, entrepreneurship, communication, imitation, exhaustion and the moment a founder becomes trapped inside the thing he created.

Part personal history, part brand analysis, the book asks why meaningful products can still fail to communicate their own value.

VANTALE® was not a failed product.
It was a completed experiment.

Writing · Brand Analysis · Editorial Design · Art Direction · Photography · Publication