Luis Mendo: Designer turned illustrator on making things that could only come from you

About this episode

Luis Mendo discusses his journey from art director to illustrator, emphasizing the importance of the human touch in creativity.

Luis Mendo is a Spanish-born illustrator based in Nagano, Japan, and his work is unmistakably, irreducibly human. His drawings are populated by bespectacled bird-like figures — part alter ego, part philosophical sparring partner — rendered with the kind of warmth and specificity that no prompt can summon. There’s a hand behind every line, and you feel it. That’s not an accident. It’s a philosophy. Because as we talk about in the show, as non-human intelligence becomes cheaper, the human touch, and real, earned, interpersonal trust will become the rarest currency (to paraphrase Anu Atluru’s quote). Luis’ path is anything but direct. After two decades as a successful art director and editorial designer in Amsterdam — building magazines, running teams, living inside meetings and inboxes — he took a sabbatical in Tokyo and never really came back. Not because the work dried up, but because he found something better: a life built around drawing, shaped by Japanese craftsmanship culture, and grounded in the shokunin ethic that says if you’re going to do a thing, you do it properly, all the way, no shortcuts. Today Luis publishes his work through a membership site he built himself, on…

People in this episode

Guest: Luis Mendo

Topics covered

• illustration
• design
• creativity
• Japanese craftsmanship
• art direction

Keywords

• human touch
• shokunin ethic
• membership site
• craftsmanship
• interpersonal trust

Mentioned in this episode

Products: the Design Better Toolkit, membership site, physical book

Books & works: The Roundup, Design Disruptors, The Brief

Places: Nagano, Japan, Amsterdam, Tokyo

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