MATAGLAP

Ever since I was young, I’ve been telling visual stories through my drawings. As I grew older, I became more curious about the world around me and absorbed as much information as possible. After school my grandparents took me to zoos, museums and into nature. My drawings were a way to tell people about all the things i saw and learned. My Moluccan heritage is a big inspiration for me, and I love combining it with new technologies like AI and 3D animation to create futurist works that explore my culture and question colonial views. Besides pushing my laptop to its limits I enjoy reading about history, psychology and listening to oldschool hiphop. I’m always intrigued by the way the human brain works and always strive to apply this in my designs.

After graduating from Communication and Multimedia Design, I started my masters Data Driven Design, which kickstarted my interest in AI and all the ethics surrounding it. During my extracurricular projects, I worked on the X=festival team, took a UX course in Tokyo and helped create the HU Green Office.

I’m ashamed to say my first UX-design job had me making screens for Shell and big insurrance companies. In my free time i went to rallies for social and climate justice and yet every monday i went back to the office to create extra value for the companies that are destroying the world. It took some time to fully figure out what kind of designer I wanted to be. The answer is simple though. I want to make this world a better place. Be it through teaching a new generation of designers to do the same, as I do now at the university of applied sciences in Amsterdam, or by designing for a better world myself.

I see myself as a visual storyteller, always aiming to create a relevant story at the right time. For me, design is storytelling, and it’s the perfect way to shed light on the stories that matter. Stories that help create a better world for everyone