From product design to graphic design, then onto illustration and all the way back: I have been on this creative journey all my life. It started when I was very little – my mom was a costume maker for television, and we were always doing arts and crafts at home. We’ve probably tried every creative hobby out there! This made creativity a huge part of my childhood. And I loved it! I could spend every minute of the day doing it.

When the time came to get an education, I went to Enschede to study Industrial Design Engineering. I accomplished my master’s degree in 2012, specializing in Design. With this master’s degree in my pocket, I worked as an industrial designer in bicycle lightning for a few years – I’m sure you know how important bikes and their lights are to us Dutch folk ;). However, I felt like there was something missing in my life. I quit my job and travelled through South America for about a year, hoping to find what I was looking for. Little did I know, I had it in me all along: the creativity I was brought up with was lost working in mass production.

I missed working from my creative intuition and wanted to explore it more. So, I started a freelance designer business and focused on developing my craft as a multi-talented designer. I worked on many total branding concepts, including website design, graphic design, illustrations and animations.

In 2019 I shifted from making digital illustrations to analogue ones, because I wanted to get my hands dirty again. At this point I felt like I could trust my artistic feeling again, as I saw myself improving every week. I still love using materials like gouache, colored pencils and crayons. I decided to digitalize the analogue illustrations and sell them as postcards and prints in my webshop. 

I take inspiration from funny or intimate daily situations. As I am also fascinated by birds, I like to humanize them and other animal characters. These two ingredients together – the daily situations and the humanized animal characters, make for slightly surrealistic but fun and recognizable scenes on the prints.

Recently, I started on a new journey I dreamed of for a long time: making products from porcelain. I combine my experience as a product designer and illustrator to make fun, functional and interesting products. My birth tiles are the very first porcelain products to make you happy. Follow the developments on Instagram: @studiodebeer or check out the Tegelschatjes landingspage.