Suzu Takeshi

Suzu Takeshi grew up in Brazil and returned to his birthplace in Japan at the age of 19. Since childhood, Suzu has been drawn to art and has developed a unique style influenced by a variety of sources: from Brazilian and American comics to Japanese manga and anime, he has incorporated the cultures he has encountered along the way into his illustrations.

Suzu lives in Hokkaido and loves nonsense art and surrealism. Some of his greatest inspirations are René Magritte, Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky.

Graphic design and illustration are the great passions of this eccentric autodidact. After years of searching for a unique style, he now proudly describes himself as ‘the most unknown illustrator in the world’! His illustrations are characterised by simplicity and minimalism, but are always created from the heart.

Suzu's creative process is special: he spends hours in the library of his hometown, jotting down ideas and making sketches in his notebook before putting his concepts on paper. The finalisation is usually done using Adobe Fresco on an iPad.

Suzu is particularly proud of his project for the Dutch agency The Happy Few, for whose website he illustrated a colourful, busy ‘Brand Wonderland’.

The principle of Omotenashi stands for Japanese hospitality and is a big part of Suzu's way of working: it means always thinking about how you can make someone – for example clients – happy and satisfied, it is the highest level of consideration.

Besides illustration, Suzu loves nature, and in his spare time he hikes the forests and mountains of Hokkaido where he finds inspiration and balance. His art is also influenced by horror films, and he likes to transform scary, disturbing scenes into humorous and even cute drawings. One of his ultimate goals? ‘”To become the most unknown illustrator in the world and at the same time the most famous of all time – if that makes any sense!”