Hometown: I was born in 1987 in Hamburg, Germany, where I currently live.

Duration: A little more than one year.

Education: I attended the Hamburg University Of Applied Science, where I graduated with a degree in communication design in 2011. During school, I studied for a semester in Amsterdam at the graphic design department of Gerrit Rietveld Acadmie. Afterward, I studied graphic design at the art school HFBK in Hamburg, where I got my master’s degree in 2014. While there, I focused on the visual possibilities of changing an everyday object’s value through repetition.

Projects: Besides my graphic design job at the German television channel RTL, where I work part time, I recently started illustrating for magazines, including NEON and ZEIT Leo. 

Career path: I only started illustrating last year—before I wokred more in graphic design and art, so you might think my career happened very quickly. But a career is a long road through your whole life, encountering different people, impressions, attitudes and philosophies along the way, until you find what is the right thing for you. And then it changes again. One thing always leads to another.

Cultural influences: It’s interesting to watch trivial things from everyday life become trends and find their way into art. Whether the art world influences the illustration and graphic design scene, or the other way around, there is a moment when objects that were, up to then, ordinary—like cacti, pingpong equipment, swimming pools and nail polish—are repeated in every kind of image and gain a strange kind of artificiality, which is very appealing to me. It’s funny and sometimes ironic how these objects resurface in the fields of graphic design and illustration as symbols of art, while still being quotidian items.

When I create pictures or installations, I take objects from our daily lives and portray them in a slightly unexpected way to draw attention to something that is normally ignorable. What I like about illustrations is that they don’t claim to be a part of the art culture, even though they can become art. Their actual purpose is more practical: it’s about entertaining, a very honest and clear intention. I like that illustrations address a general audience and deal with common issues. To transform these daily concerns into illustrations gives our everyday desires and worries importance and makes us see them in another light.

Work environment: Physically and culturally, my work environment is basically my sofa. I don’t need much space to illustrate because I paint everything on my iPad. And I sit on the couch to read articles, watch movies, TV series and cartoons—a big part of my inspiration.

Aspirations: I hope that I can find a space between the art world and pop culture where I can work in a field with contrasts and contradictions. Contrast is where the real magic happens.