Founded in 2000, Tellart is an Experience Design studio that uniquely combines future foresight, design craft and emerging technology to create new ways for people to explore, understand and enjoy our world.

We are a global team of strategists, architects, industrial and graphic designers, electronics and software engineers, writers and filmmakers.

We believe that real invention is sparked not just by human needs and business opportunities, but also by discovering the unique strengths of raw materials. We treat emerging technologies as materials, conducting our own R&D to understand their inherent qualities and what they make newly possible.

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For 20 years we have worked to transform digital technologies into visible, tangible materials in our prototyping workshops. Today we are layering in a new wave of technologies including artificial intelligence, synthetic biology and advanced robotics. These have the potential to become not just sophisticated materials and tools, but active “partners” in the design process that can inspire us to work in new ways and create new forms of cultural experience.

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As technology becomes more complex and opaque, we feel a calling as designers to give individuals and organisations an imagination for the future and how we can live better together. Our goal as a team is to create work that is forward-looking in its form as well as its social, environmental and cultural impact.

As an independently owned studio, we are driven to partner with clients in multiple industries whose work brings meaningful and positive change to the world.

We take on projects at the highest level of difficulty that challenge us to grow and push the boundaries of our discipline.

Learn more about our culture.

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Team

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As Chief Design Officer, Matt shapes Tellart's strategic direction and creative practice. He is an internationally recognised speaker and professor of design. He is a member of the Core Faculty at Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design (CIID, Denmark) and was previously an Adjunct Professor at Umeå Institute of Design (UID, Sweden), and a member of the Rhode Island School of Design faculty for ten years (RISD, USA).

Matt holds both Bachelor of Fine Arts and Bachelor of Industrial Design degrees from RISD, as well as a Masters of Fine Arts in Interaction Design from Umeå University. In addition to his design education and practice, Matt has been an Advanced Life Support Paramedic on the United States' federal disaster medical team and National Ski Patrol. He is also an Ocean Yachtmaster (RYA) and Rescue Diver (PADI), and is a member of Royal Ocean Racing Club, the General Society of Mayflower Descendants and Sons of the American Revolution. Matt is an avid sailor and has made several trans-Atlantic ocean races.

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As Managing Director, Paul works closely with clients, partners, and Tellart’s own design and engineering teams. From concept development through to delivery, he ensures projects develop creatively through each stage of the design process. Paul brings to bear many years of experience, and a passion for creativity in technology; his ability to deeply understand business, brand and project strategies informs his work developing creative concepts, and getting knee-deep in code and electronics.

Paul graduated in 2006 with first class honors in MediaLab Arts, which formed part of i-DAT, the University of Plymouth's lab for creative research, experimentation and innovation across the fields of digital art, science and technology. During this time his main area of inquiry was embodied interaction, and the philosophical teleologies that underpin embodied interaction.

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As Strategy Director, Maia helps to define what each project needs to communicate, and why. Her core focus is on finding the heart of the story and working closely with the team to interpret this into meaningful form and experience. She has a background in user research and information design, and is passionate about turning complex data into clear insights that spark our collective imagination for the future.

Maia has a BA in comparative literature from Brown University (honors, Magna Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa), an MSc in virtual environments from the Bartlett School of Architecture (Distinction) and a PhD in computer science from University College London (Finalist, 2004 British Computer Society/Conference of Professors and Heads of Computing Distinguished Dissertation Awards). She is trained as a Montessori Assistant to Infancy (age 0-3) by Association Montessori Internationale.

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As a Senior Designer at Tellart, Bjørn combines his curiosity for new and emerging technologies with his love for physical and human interactions. Bjørn is an open-source maker and hacker at heart whose work manifests between physical and virtual space. With experience in design, production, robotics and physical computing, he works across multiple stages in Tellart's projects.
He describes his passion as finding a balance between nature and technology, whether it is making drawing machines, designing typefaces or creating more humanistic technologies.

Bjørn is from Denmark and holds a Master’s Degree in Interaction Design from the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design and a Bachelor’s degree in Communication design from Kolding Design School, shaping his Scandinavian aesthetics. Graduating from CIID with highest honor, his graduation project has won multiple awards and pushed the thinking of machine learning as a means of prototyping and enriching spatial interaction.

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As Creative Director, Selena works holistically on strategic planning and concept development. She is obsessed with disruptive technology, storytelling and emergent behaviors in service of making positive change in the world. She has now turned her attention to Experience Design after generating iconic and category-changing campaigns for some of the world’s biggest brands at the best Ad agencies in the world. She works nomadically between Abu Dhabi, Amsterdam and Melbourne.

Selena is Australian and holds a BA(Design) from Curtin University. She was headhunted to London, which started a highly awarded 13-year journey at Wieden+Kennedy, Fallon and Clemenger BBDO. She has picked up Cannes Lion, D&AD and One Show awards. She complements her professional work with continuing research into the future of brands and has a conceptual art practice involving sculpture, films and immersive installations.

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As Executive Producer at Tellart, Ries combines his deep knowledge of the design and media production pipeline with his unstoppable drive to bring ideas to life. Having managed some of Tellart's largest and most ambitious projects to date, he is a motivational powerhouse. In addition, over the last 20 years Ries has written, produced and directed dozens of independent and commissioned films. This passion and affinity for filmmaking lends itself naturally to Tellart's multi-sensory projects, where audiovisual production and storytelling are critical.

Ries holds a bachelor degree from the Design Academy, Eindhoven. His graduation project, which ended up in the San Francisco MoMA, reflected on something he's always been fascinated by: The relationship between man and technology. Prior to joining Tellart, Ries led the video department at Fabrica, Benetton's communication research center.

Krista O’Keefe

As the Head of Culture & Operations at Tellart, Krista oversees key processes, communication and employee wellbeing to ensure optimal efficiency and quality across all projects. With a background in production and studio management, Krista has a deep understanding of how different parts of the business need to work in harmony to inspire creativity and engagement while supporting business objectives. She strives to elevate every process, team and project she’s a part of through her years of international experience leading teams and projects across film, photography, exhibitions and experiences.

Creative Direction - Central Saint Martins College of Arts & Design, London, UK (2019)
Fashion Marketing Diploma - Blanche Macdonald Centre, Vancouver, CA (2012)
Event Planning - Mount Royal University, Calgary, CA (2010)

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As a Senior Technologist at Tellart, Fernando works with hardware to construct and actualize clients’ visions. Fernando prototypes solutions and effectively implements adjustments and improvements along the way. On Tellart’s Research and Development team, he draws upon his design training as well as skills honed in his previous work at Maryann Thompson Architects, Decor Craft, Inc., and as the Art Director for Providence’s TEDx 2012 events. His work has been featured in international publications such as Contagious magazine, and in 2011 was featured as part of an installation at Japan Society.

Fernando is a graduate of the Industrial Design program at the Rhode Island School of Design.

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Sabrina designs and develops immersive interactive environments that synthesize architecture with media technology. As a media artist Sabrina has created and exhibited several interactive installations and generative artworks. She is particularly interested in integrations of digital technologies into our physical world. Highly fascinated by the influence of modern technology on human behavior, she strives to create engaging experiences that enable social interaction and change.
Sabrina is co-founder of Creative Coding Amsterdam, a monthly meetup for creative coding enthusiasts. She is actively engaged in the creative coding community and frequently visits and volunteers at media art and technology events throughout Europe.

Sabrina earned her Bachelor of Architecture from Delft University of Technology, after which she spent a year in Los Angeles pursuing MediaSCAPES at Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc). After this introduction to emerging relationships within technology, media and architecture, she moved her focus from architecture towards interactive environments, and she achieved her Master’s Degree in Media Technology at Leiden University, combining creativity and technology with scientific research.

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Simon works to understand the behaviors and motivations of people in any context or culture in order to formulate strategy and concepts. He strives to design services and experiences that meet real human needs and have deep emotional resonance. Simon unites a pragmatic human-centered design and business perspective coupled with a communication focus in order to find and articulate the “why” in any situation. Before joining Tellart, Simon led design projects, training, and research in over 20 countries. He specializes in cross-cultural design research, strategy, creative workshops, and written and verbal communication.

Simon is from Vienna and brings a background in sociology (cum laude) from Columbia University and in interaction design (with honors) from CIID to projects in environments such as prisons, isolated rural communities, government offices, and venture capital boardrooms. He thrives when translating across disciplines and cultural lines, working within a diverse team, carving spoons out of found wood, and reading about medieval travelers.

Dirk Bertels

Dirk is an experienced design lead with an award-winning history of working in the museum and cultural sector. He is an arts and design professional skilled in concept design and art direction but is rooted in practical experience in creating multimedia, immersive environments, and user interface design. Dirk believes that strong narratives, based on meaningful messages, and interdisciplinary teamwork are vital in creating unforgettable experiences. 

He is a teacher/researcher in Behavioral Design and Immersive Environments at the University of Applied Sciences. Before working at Tellart Dirk co-founded and led the design team at Studio Louter. There he has worked for the National Museum of Qatar, Louvre Abu Dhabi, Rijksmuseum Boerhaave, NEMO, Hermitage Amsterdam, National Museum of World Cultures, Pro-demos, and others.

MsC Social Computer Science, University of Amsterdam

tiago rosado

Tiago helps to transform complex narratives into emotionally engaging visitor experiences. His multidisciplinary career and interests in arts and creative collaborative processes allow him to tackle projects from different angles and get ideas across teams and clients. His exhibitions have been in Honduras, Guatemala, Indonesia, Poland, Greece, France, Germany, the Nederland’s at Fotomuseum Rotterdam, Stedelijk Museum, Tropenmuseum Amsterdam, Belgium at Royal Museum of Fine Arts, and Spain at Mies van der Rohe Pavilion Barcelona.

Master in Architecture, Lusiada University, Portugal
Master Ephemeral Architecture and Temporary Spaces, Barcelona, Spain

Anneloes bakker

As a producer at Tellart, Anneloes’s enjoys supporting creative teams to do what they do best with her innate proactive and organisation skills. She is passionate about working on projects that have a positive impact on the world and Tellart’s immersive installations tie into her fascination of the emotive power that art and design hold and how they can affect the world. 


Before joining the Tellart team, Anneloes worked in fashion & advertising, leading casting and production for photographers like Carlijn Jacobs. She is passionate about diversity and inclusion, and has worked on initiatives striving for a more inclusive industry.

BA Art History - University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, NL (2011)
Cambridge English Proficiency - BLTC, Amsterdam, NL (2020)
Subtitling  - InVision Ondertiteling BV (2020)

about-me

As a Designer at Tellart, Ilse focuses on giving shape to the relation of people's behavior towards objects and experiences. In her role, Ilse performs the balancing act between ensuring societal relevance, understanding people, and working with the possibilities and consequences of technology. With a heart for exploring and hacking new technologies, Ilse loves to take up challenges of merging the physical and digital to create new futures.

Ilse is dutch and holds a MFA in Interaction Design from the Umeå Institute of Design in Sweden and a BSc degree in Industrial Design from the Eindhoven University of Technology. 

The combination of a technical focused degree with Scandinavian design methodes gives her a versatile profile. Before Tellart Ilse worked at LEGO in Denmark creating cutting edge kids toys and lead the interaction design at a start-up creating a social autonomous drone. 

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As a designer and 3D visualizer at Tellart, Rick contributes to the design process with a wide range of modeling, visualisation, and rendering techniques, which lead to transformative ways of storytelling. In his work Rick strives for the translation of concepts into the visual and for telling more comprehensible and human stories through visual media. As Tellart’s visualizer, he has created a variety of works that illustrate complex ideas, concepts, and stories and bring them to life.


In addition to working in the visual field, Rick works as a DJ under the alias Jumelage. He has a great passion for avant- garde music with a focus on grooves from the nu-disco and underground house scene.

Rick holds a MFA in Interior Architecture; Research + Design, Piet Zwart Institute and a BSc in Industrial Design, TU Eindhoven.

Awards

We have been awarded numerous top international prizes for our work including the SXSW Experimental Award, Cannes Lions, Webby, Core77, D&AD Yellow Pencil and our work is featured in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Design Museum.

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In 2016, Tellart was honored with the National Design Award in Interaction Design, Smithsonian Museum's top national honor for outstanding achievement in design through excellence, innovation, and enhancement of the quality of life.

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new projects and partnerships: projects@tellart.com

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press, PR and speaking engagements: press@tellart.com

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please include a cover letter, CV & portfolio: careers@tellart.com

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