Animation Reel
Biography Interview
Maren Amini is based in Hamburg, Germany.
She works mainly with digital ink and watercolours. With her work, she brings themes and emotions simply and directly to the point.
Increasingly, she also creates time-lapse videos with visualised core messages to accompany the finished illustrations. Her husband Daniell Amini composes the music for these videos and so these messages arrive with double impact.
For Maren Amini, humour is a great medium to make complicated, heavy and dry topics stick with the end consumer. Because once you laugh about a topic, it stays with you forever.
Selected clients
The Washington Post, HHLA (Hamburg Port and Logistics), Fraunhofer Institut, CIMA Financial Management Magazine, Credit Suisse, STERN, SPIEGEL, die ZEIT, GEOlino,Harvard-Business-Manager, Chrismon-Magazin, Telekom, Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, Verdi, AOK, Greenpeace, Hamburg Wasser, Hamburg Energie, Deutscher Beamten Bund, Robert-Bosch-Stiftung, Granini, Saatch & Saatchi, Chiesi GmbH, Südtirol Marketing Gesellschaft, Dutch Uncle
Read moreAwards
- 2021 World Illustration Awards, longlist selection
- 2021 American Illustration 40, the Archive selection
- 2020 Category Consumer Magazines, German Society for Nutrition
- 2019 Winner of the competition for successful patient brochures of the Netzwerk Patienten- und Familienedukation e.V. and the University of Witten/Herdecke
- 2019 audience award „der Meefisch“ children´s book competition
- 2016 silver medal 9. international „Grafikatur“
- 2013 „LeadAward“, bronze medal in the category: newspapers, contribution of the year (die ZEIT)
- 2011 best project of the year, mdm-sponsorship award
- 2010 „Red Dot Design-Award“, category: illustration
Maren Amini in the Spotlight
Maren Amini
Illustrating the future
We work with the world's most brilliant and visionary creatives to bring the boldest concepts to life.
Your pronouns
She/ her
How do you define your identity? Do you identify with (or advocate for) any marginalized communities?
I define myself as a German heterosexual cis woman. And I also have Afghan roots.
Where is home?
My home is in Hamburg, Germany
Describe your illustration style in one sentence
I would describe my style as simple line drawing that gets to the heart of the issues in a charming, direct and humorous way.
What lights your soul on fire?
Good Food
What themes do you enjoy exploring in your illustrations?
My favourite subjects are dry, complicated and heavy topics that become more accessible through my drawings.
What techniques do you use?
Analog I draw only with pencil, but mainly I work with Procreate and I use there sumi and watercolors.
How much of yourself and your own story can we see in your work?
Quite often the men I draw look like my husband…I had drawn him strangely before I knew him.
Is there an unmistakable thread in your creative work?
I would say that the common thread is humor.
What do you want to be known for?
I want to be known as an illustrator, cartoonist and maybe a singer.
Which projects excite you most?
Cartoons. What challenges me the most is to make strangers laugh out loud with a single image.
What is your dream gig?
I dream of drawing covers and cartoons for the New Yorker Magazine. Or an order so similar to the videos for Red Bull “gives wings” So to be a part of the corporate identity.
Where, when and how do you best create?
Preferably in my studio in St.Pauli, near the Reeperbahn
How has your style developed since you started?
It’s gotten better stroke by stroke.
What do you find most challenging in your practice or in the illustration industry
The fear of failure that comes anew before every assignment, like a kind of stage fright
How as being an illustrator changed your life?
It hasn’t changed me, I’ve always been an illustrator. I knew it already when I was 6 years old.
Having really steady customers and being able to make a very good living from this dream job has made a lot of things more relaxed.
Name a tool you can’t live without!
I Pad / Procreate !!
Tell us about a project you worked on that was significant to you as an artist.
I have a studio with a small store. Being in direct contact with people there and seeing that direct reaction to my cartoons motivates me. I can’t wait to put a new cartoon in the shop window and see if people smile or laugh at it. Or even want to hang the pictures in their homes.
What influences or inspires your art?
Cartoons from The New Yorker Magazine.
What would you tell your younger self?
Don’t worry, be happy
Why do you think art speaks louder than words?
Because the image is quicker, more forceful and more lasting than the word