About

Design Vision

I'd like to make things that have a positive impact on everyone involved. It should give something of meaning thats worth more than what it extracts. In other words, it should be viable: self-sustaining in a whole that can carry it. That means that design needs to consider the whole context and all the perspectives of the people interacting with it, direct or indirect.

When designing, I go back and forth between everyone involved to understand all perspectives on the problem. I then try to get everyone on board with a particular direction through conceptual storytelling. All the while, I am applying systems knowledge and engineering to tie it all together in a viable solution.

▲ That’s me in the picture, back in 2002, a curious, dreamy kid, always imagining wild adventures and drawing out my inventions and observations (the sketches are from the same period). I refuse let that inner child escape, and still don’t believe a dream can be too bold.

Resume

🡣 print resume (NL, pdf)

Education

Accolades & exhibitions

Publications

▲ Apart from making things, I also enjoy exploring places.




Profile

Bringing people together

A big part of design for me is talking to everyone involved and looking for common ground. Design projects usually deal with many people with different interests. I enjoy listening to what they feel and think. It helps to see things from another angle and find agreement. Others often describe me as approachable, non-judgmental and pleasant to work with, and regularly ask me to mediate conflicts.

Practical skills

From a young age I have been interested in technology, art and all kinds of visual media to express my ideas. By drawing and making things I started learning design sensibilities, technical insight, visualisation techniques and practical skills. Through study, work and personal projects I later learned about various production techniques and other technical fields like mechanics, surface engineering, optics, electronics and programming. That doesn't make me a master in any of these fields, but it helps in understanding the options, making feasible concepts, building working prototypes and communicating with experts.

Sense making & problem solving

I am a bit chaotic, but that mindset also helps me in drawing connections. That's useful in transferring existing knowledge to new skills, recognizing patterns to make sense of new subjects, and finding solutions within a new problem context. It helps in learning and creative problem solving. Because design is all about problem solving, I trained this through practicce and by learning more about design thinking and systematic problem solving methods like biomimicry and TRIZ.

Systems expertise

Environmental and social impact are important to me, so I specialised in sustainability and systems science during my masters. That means paying attention to the entire life cycle and aspects like maintainability, packaging, transport, recycling and material durability. I'm also interested in more technical aspects of systems theory, such as control engineering, cybernetics, mechatronics and robotics.

Clients & collaborations

I have been involved in over 80 jobs for 21 clients (as of 2020), from small startups to corporations like Danone Nutricia. These assignments range from single illustrations to full product development.

Get in touch



You can always reach me at hi@markzwart.com or reach out on these places: