Erick Mazer Yamashita

I started designing for the web back when designing for the web meant writing the HTML yourself. 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 working at the intersection of AI and wealth management. On the side I advise and angel-invest in a few small companies whose teams I like. The rest of the time I try to be present.

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. I'm sitting with a question that keeps coming back: where does AI quietly improve the craft, and where does it flatten it? I draw that line harder than I used to. I've been reading philosophy on the side for a few years now. It changes how I show up to almost everything else.