MATT MAEDA

Matt Maeda was born and raised in Hawaii into a culturally diverse family. His first love was illustrating anime from the age of three with Hawaii influences. Through drawing, he developed a deep respect and appreciation for the Japanese and Hawaiian cultural art while interpreting visuals through digital media. He has been carrying composition books throughout his youth writing down stories and lessons that are conveyed through iconography and visual guides that would lead him to working on educational lessons and presentations with graphics focused communication by age 21. Captivated by the art form of Anime he would explore and design: characters, robots, cute animals, Japanese fashion, kamon family crests, fantasy monsters and weapons, and food.

Formal training was through going to Windward Community Colleges Atelier, the Leeward Community College Digital Media, and the Kapiolani Community College New Media Arts. During college he worked as a freelance artist for: Desktop Icon Packs, Logos, Tee Shirt Designs, Maid Cafe Uniforms, Book Cover Art, Visual Business Plans, and In Game World Design. Maeda would also dive into the world of cooking by working the center of a Sushi Restaurant and then at The Whole Ox Butchery for a better understanding about creating visuals for the Culinary Arts. He would go to make a butchery reference poster for Molokai Livestock Cooperative and created Digital Desktop Wallpapers and a Room Poster for PC Gamerz that was helping Moanalua High School grow its Na Menehune Esports Program.

Maeda is naturally creative in looking at things through an outside the box style, a method that first uses natural creativity and enhances it with information gathering that breaks down the essence of a project and looks at different ways of reassembling the project to appear different.

He has worked on large scale projects, including one that helps revive communities and business through product design and cute mascot characters that are inspired from the region of Niigata Prefecture Japan. Working with locals who live in the area, national businesses, researching area history, and looking from a foreigner perspective gives several different perspectives that gives a fresh take on visuals and suggested ideas. The project is Japan Kominka Rescue and has been featured at the event The Honolulu Festival.

He founded the Imagine Hawaii “IHI” Social Media Group, a social group that is dedicated to educating, preserving, and understanding Hawaii families' separate family and family business history and seeing how it fits in the large picture of Hawaii’s unique culture. With informal talk story encounters the information gathering objectives are easier to obtain with no formalities and get to a more personal exchange between their own experiences and ideas in pursuit of knowledge and wisdom to inform future generations. It has a reach that is beyond academia of researchers and book curators that are bound by funding requirements and is not bound by professional practices. 

To Matt is always seeking to have different responses from different viewers and have the art speak for itself in his drawings that are expressed with passion. His hope is that the expression that has been made through digital drawings can be observed and analyzed with an attention to detail and a wit of knowing how to use negative space to properly lead a viewer's eye. Hopefully art pieces will spark something and make the art piece have a feeling unique to the person viewing it.