Duration: Three years.

Location: Stuttgart, Germany.

Education: Diploma in communications design, State Academy of Art and Design Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany.

Career path: I jumped into studying communication design with the expectations that I would become an illustrator. I loved to draw as a child, but the more software skills I picked up during my studies, the less interesting using a pen became. Now, I create full-service solutions for clients that use custom typefaces and classically inspired graphic design. Recently, I’ve been incorporating more 3-D visuals and animations, and I have been learning more about interactive design, such as augmented reality and game design.

Cultural influences: I love memes. When people put together iconic, recognizable pictures with sharp text, they can create new, understandable messages. Memes easily go viral on a global scale and mostly use humor to teach you about something. That’s an approach that I dearly miss seeing in our contemporary poster scene—including my own posters!

Favorite projects: I had a lot of fun working with design firm PARAT.cc on the ten-year anniversary of Munich-based contemporary art museum Museum Brandhorst. We came up with an unconventional, cross-media communication strategy with colorful key visuals. Our approach was bold, and we were quite surprised when the museum accepted our pitch. It was a great experience when our fantasy became reality.

Work environment: My environment in Stuttgart doesn’t have a strong demand for my crazy design explorations. I mostly create classic corporate identities and poster designs, but I enjoy these jobs. I always keep practicing to deliver a professional service while keeping space for my self-initiated field studies. Thanks to the possibility of working remotely, I now have clients from around the world who demand more progressive solutions.

Philosophy: I’ve given up setting specific long-term goals to achieve. The digital landscape and its potential for visual communication keeps changing so fast that I prefer to stay flexible. I want to transform fresh opportunities into innovative solutions.

Anything else? The pandemic has challenged me as a designer in a way that I never dreamed. Whether it was losing jobs, getting bored at home or not being able to go out for a meal, I had to get creative first in order to find a solution. These problems came up in big quantities, but really, they weren’t that new to me. I want to remind the creative community that you have probably trained yourself well to find ways out of your problems, so don’t forget that!