Jasper Fassaert is fairly new to the wonderful community of Illustrators on Instagram, however, he is not new to the field of illustration. In fact, he is the creative director and illustrator at Hiber Global, an IoT Services company in Amsterdam. I had the pleasure of interviewing Fassaert on how he became an in-house designer for the Dutch company.
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from Hiber.global’s website
Before we begin discussing your design process, why not tell us a little background over your artistic career, when did it began? When did you realize this was the path you wanted to take?
Since I was young I was always drawing or making things from clay etc. I think during my high school days, I did more sketching than homework. I sucked at finishing stuff though, all I have from that period is rough pencil sketches with an incidental inked drawing. This made my art teacher advise me to start taking extra classes, to make sure I would have enough work to get accepted into the art university. So I enrolled in a pre-year at Amsterdam’s University of Art, every Saturday I went by train to the Rietveld Academy to get lectured at a variety of disciplines. This was so conceptual and vague that I realized quickly that this wasn’t my path. I remember making paintings by throwing tomatoes stuffed with acrylic paint and stuff like that. Terrible. I just didn’t get it. But it was during these classes that I met a guy who went to the Cartoon School. I joined him for a class and I made up my mind instantly. This was my choice.
What inspired you to chose this career path?
In the end it was not a single choice. It’s a choice that grows. I was sure I wanted to do something in the creative field, but it could have easily been in animation or TV production. My path went from Cartoon School to advertising, via DVD production into the Internet business, to end up twenty years later in a mix of UI/UX, branding and illustration.
How long have you been working at Hiber? Where should other illustrators look to apply for a similar job in this field?
I’ve been working there now for almost three years. Where to look for a similar job is a hard question. I think every company has it’s own definition of creative director, depending on company size, type of business, company structure. What’s important is that you know what type of responsibilities you want or can handle, what type of work makes you jump out of bed in the morning and what the value is you can add in the role. For example, let’s say you start a position in a company where your role is mainly to create leverage for the work of your team. When you know you don’t like it that much, maybe you should look for a different type company. I would say it’s mainly important to talk to your future manager, and get an idea if he’s giving you the space to execute ideas.
Let’s talk about your design process now. What inspires the work you create today?
It maybe sounds weird, but I’ve been mostly inspired by illustrators on Instagram. Before I discovered the huge community of illustrators on Instagram, I never even looked on the app. But the quality is so high! Amazing artists hide there! And not one or ten, no hundreds! From Indonesia to the USA. It’s amazing. And what I love is that the people are very genuine. They do something they really like, you can’t really fake it. It takes serious effort to create a piece of work. So not only the work is genuine, but also the interaction. I love it. The creativity on light and colour is so immense, I can keep scrolling…
Have your influences been the same since you started this career? If not, how have they evolved over time?
Absolutely not. At the start of my career I was hugely inspired by books like How I Lost My Virginity by Richard Branson or the biography of Andy Warhol. These people did big things, which lasts decades if not centuries. Over time you also start to realize that you not only need a massive amount of talent to do something like that; also the guts, the personality and the dedication to give up other things in life. So depending on the choices I made, I had different influencers which matched those choices. It varied from people who changed the world, to people who only changed their own lives because they didn’t like it. This may even be for only a very short period, and it doesn’t matter. They all teach you something, even if you don’t agree with it.
Do you have any favorite graphic designers or fine artists that you relate with or just are heavily inspired by?
One guy I really really like is Tom Haugomat. He has this elegant simplistic style which is crazy difficult to make, let alone to make it a style. He draws with maybe 3 or 4 colours and knows to create this atmosphere where you feel small in an overwhelming world. Mostly natural environments. He doesn’t use a single stroke too much. Very powerful. I recently bought a book. It’s something like a graphic novel. It’s amazingly beautiful. In such elegant drawings he illustrates the life story of an astronaut. The mood in the book is very dramatic, without a single word written. It’s purely graphics. To me, this is a piece of art…
As of today, what work have you created, that you are highly proud of?
It’s been only recently that I’ve started illustrating again, after a 20 year break. I was surprised how well it still went. I have to admit it’s a bit rusty, but I’m not displeased with it. I added a few visuals, which I created with Illustrator. Finishing them made me think about the start of my career. I literally had just learned how to operate a Mac, and what Adobe Illustrator was. I couldn’t do shit with Illustrator. A collegue of mine said that otherwise I should just start drawing something from an example in Illustrator. And I looked at this vector image of an old VCR. I’m not sure what I said, but I know that in my head I thought: No way I can do that! And there we are, 20 years later, wrapping up an illustration of a train riding through the mountains at sunset. Who would have thought…
Finally, what is an inspiring piece of advice you can send out to aspiring illustrators?
I would say there are two things. The first is that your skills are made for 20% out of talent and for 80% out of attitude. Talent is something you have or not, it’s the attitude which makes the difference. It helps you develop your talent, it helps you to build and exploit that talent. It’s the attitude which monetizes your talent. Use it. The second is, always work for your portfolio. Is the money, not as good for the job you’re doing? Make it valuable by creating a piece for your portfolio. Did you land a great gig, but you the company won’t allow you to show it in your portfolio? [not even after it’s published]. Don’t do it. Your portfolio is your biggest marketing tool, it should be top notch and up to date. Only a few artists go viral, getting paid for what you do is hard work…
To check out the rest of Jasper’s illustration journey, check out his Instagram & Dribble here.
