Erick Mazer Yamashita

I started designing for the web back when designing for the web meant writing HTML by hand. That grounding — treating craft as a form of attention — has never really left me. In my early twenties I lived in Tokyo, studied character design and Japanese, and worked as a designer there. I came back to São Paulo with a way of looking at things that I haven't been able to shake. In 2014 I joined Nubank when it was ten people in a small house. I stayed for eight years and helped take it from zero to seventy million customers — designing the bank account, internal tools, the design system, leading teams, and trying to make sense of what the company could become next. After Nubank I spent some time at Latitud working with Latin American founders, then taught for a while at Aprender Design and Miami Ad School. These days I'm a full-time designer at a startup at the intersection of AI and wealth management. On the side I advise and invest in a few startups whose teams I like. The rest of the time I try to be present.

I don't really separate design into disciplines. UI, motion, copy, the feeling of a thing — to me they aren't handoffs between specialists, they're one material. Most of the work is context and intention — what this is for, who it's for, and what we're willing to trade to get there. Almost everything is a tradeoff; naming it honestly is half the job. The rest is rhythm: zooming out to the whole, then back in to a single detail. Letting things diverge before they converge. Cycling through think, make, check until it settles. What I'm really after is harmony — the point where nothing is fighting, and the words, the spacing, the timing, the smallest transition all point the same way. I make a small move and wait, adjust and wait, holding the whole thing at once. When it finally works, it feels less made than found.

Mostly, I'm paying attention to my daughter — what she notices, what she's afraid of, what makes her laugh at something twice. She teaches me how much I miss when I'm in a hurry. Lately I'm excited by how much further I can carry my own work — taking an idea all the way to the final result instead of handing it off to another team or person. I like the control that gives me over how things turn out, and how much I learn by staying close to every part of the process. I've been reading philosophy on the side for a few years now. It changes how I show up to almost everything else.