Michael Alfred
Seibert Faigenbaum

This is the design practice of M.A.S.F., designer, creative director, researcher and artist: a vague somehow-or-other can‘t stick together all-alike-ness changed to an easily described hang-together-ness that is unlike that anything that is different.

A decade after co-founding and establishing his own creative studio unfun.de in 2012, M.A.S.F. was named Creative Director of saboteur.world, entrusted with defining and branding “the birth of the brand’s mystical minimalism,”- according to 032c. In 2023, M.A.S.F. was appointed Creative Director of SABOTEUR’s mothership, the global jewellery brand Thomas Sabo, who was celebrating it’s 40th anniversary in 2024.

By late 2025, he chose to venture back into the wider creative industry—choosing to be once more a free and independent agent in the world’s collective imagination. He began collaborating with the post-disruption creative company ADULT and took on the role of Design Director at Club Vasca, working under Creative Director Victor Barragán and founder Danny O’Neill.

On the streets, in your hands: With 10+ years of experience working across multiple aspects of industry, M.A.S.F. creates communications for brands, builds campaigns, conjures experiences and fabricates environments that drive new territories of engagement and aspirations. 

His roster includes a variety of corporate clients and start-up hopefuls alike: he brought Traum and Tristesse to Nike in Berlin, Rap Caviar street altars to Spotify in Brooklyn, and did some www footwork for Google (of which you can find on Google). He has created memorable brandings for physical activations, such as the adidas flagship stores in NYC and Paris or retro-futuristic animations for the opening of the RIMOWA store in Ginza, Tokyo.

M.A.S.F. also has a strong focus on creating artworks alongside his narration. His works include invoking the #1 Billboard album cover for GUNNA/WUNNA, providing animations for Travis Scott’s ASTROWORLD Tour (yes, that one), and creating art pieces for RapCaviar Pantheon featuring Cardi B, Jaden Smith, and SZA.

Plenty of M.A.S.F.’s artworks and merchandise (as well as webpage design) are online for perusal through Live From Earth – an international artist-collective based in Berlin. A petition is currently open to make his drugfree shirt designs mandatory for all Berlin visitors upon arrival in Terminal B.

“I do not like the expression IRL. I prefer AFK, because I think that the internet is very real.”

A great share of M.A.S.F.'s design practice has been creating digital experiences able to unlock new modes of interaction both on and away from the keyboard. M.A.S.F. helped to create a website for the Austrian band Bilderbuch which went viral with 400k downloads. The concept was to create a new form of chosen identity and alignment for fans, in the midst of EU upheaval. This garnered much attention when even the german foreign minister generated and posted his own fake passport on Twitter. M.A.S.F.also created a Netflix counterfeit for the artist-duo NILSSON EICKE. Questionable foreign affair guerrilla tactics aside, M.A.S.F. also worked on a virtual world called ‘Hydroharmonia’ for American musician Kelsey Lu, which carried the traveler through multi-sensorial mythological lands both formed and unknown, complete with underlying soundtrack. A new mode of experiencing music where, according to the musician, it ought be listened.  

M.A.S.F. works as a designer within and for communities and bijou institutions, and alongside collectives and allies with (sub-)culturally rooted projects. This includes branding for the oldest Kunstverein in Germany- the Kunstverein Nuremberg, in honor of Albrecht Dürer- and the progressive electronic club IFZ in Leipzig. 

He has ventured into institutions, providing campaigns and communications for the likes of the Central Welfare Board of Jews in Germany ZWST, and consulted for a think tank at Moscow’s Strelka Institute’s Terraforming program. M.A.S.F.’s pièce de résistance in May 2024 was the stage design of Eden (by the coreographer Adi Hanan) at the Volksoper Vienna.

M.A.S.F. gained teaching experience over the years in a number of universities. Beginning in 2014, he taught at the Nuremberg Institute of Technology and became university lecturer at AdBK Nürnberg in 2016. The following year, he taught a course on ‘Typography in Digital Publishing’ at Burg Giebichenstein – University of Art and Design Halle. In 2019, he returned to Nürnberg.

In 2021, before joining the HGB Leipzig, M.A.S.F. developed a digital marketplace, printed issue, and streaming event of the Independent Publishing Fair entitled “it’s a book”.

Other various workshops and lectures include alignments at HFG Offenbach, TGM Munich, HTWG Konstanz, Captcha Design Festival and THWS. He has also been seated on a number of juries, including the Graphic Design Festival in Scotland (now INTL), and the École de création visuelle in France.

M.A.S.F. studied in 4 different universities. He began his studies at THWS in Würzburg, before moving onto the well-established ZHdK in Switzerland, where he understandably could not be bothered to afford living. He then moved to Berlin to study at the KHB Berlin, before moving on to HGB Leipzig, where he graduated in 2012, under Günter Karl Bose, with a virtual exhibition called printfiction (which led him into starter recognition, with a write up on verge etc.) Regarding his final project: some could say it was one of the first dives into the metaverse, offering users access to experience a number of artworks from around the globe, without so much as a tram ticket. Leipzig wanted him to design a book instead. Fair enough…

M.A.S.F.’s work has been featured in publications with highly dramatic and rather impressive names, such as “The Future of German Graphic Design“ from ACTAR (which by now makes him pretty much the Present, given the fact that the accolade is now pretty much in the Past), along many other write ups from publishing houses including Gingko Press, Victionary, Étapes and Niggli Verlag.

Apart from his digital work opus, M.A.S.F. has curated, produced and participated in a number of exhibitions, including the joint German-Israeli exhibition at the Albrecht Dürer Gesellschaft in Nürnberg in 2015, entitled SPACE ODDITY. He also exhibited in HOTEL MOSCOW, and was part of the World as Words Exhibition at Kunstbibliothek Berlin in 2011. 

M.A.S.F. co-founded and established his own full service creative studio unfun.de with the designer Simon Niedermeier and creative technologist Wolfgang Schöffel. Their friend from the same village Stefan Endress (and the one with whom they launched their very first website) went on to establish his own futurist design studio IntMagic—after a short detour through London and an invaluable stint with one of the G.O.A.T.s of UX and UI radical beauty, Marc Kremers.

Many of his favorite projects (including a houseparty for DefJam in Chinatown) were done in tandem with one of the most regal persons in the creative stratosphere: Cecilia Azcarate. Since then, Cecilia has just launched her post‑disruption creative company ADULT with Helena Hermes. Being in touch with her ultimately led M.A.S.F. to design the #1 Billboard Charts album artwork for Gunna/Wunna, alongside the otherworldly Tal Midyan. In collaboration with Tal, unfun, and NoTricks, they created the virtual listening world for Kelsey Lu. The viral passport website for Bilderbuch (and all further bureaucratic legalities thereof) were juggled together with Simone Cilhar.

Through Cecilia, M.A.S.F. was also introduced to Art Director Aurore Chauve (who shares her Marseille home with painter Guy Yanai). Around her long table, he crossed paths with strategist and copywriter Thomas Pokorn and design director Kristina Bartosova—both of whom have since carried their creative journey forward to New York City.

He actively conspires (see: the NILSSON EICKE website) with his old flatmate Florian Lamm of Lamm & Kirch. They continue to see past each other’s differences, even if one chooses BJJ over Muay Thai. Another past flatmate and collaborator of M.A.S.F.’s is Moritz Lösel, who has also recently opened a new studio in Berlin: Studio veryes. M.A.S.F. has clearly lived with some very good eggs. In Vienna, that meant being lucky enough to live near the gifted Marcus Zoller – partner in doom metal concerts, and already missed on the way home.

And not only lived with them—he also studied with some: during his time in Zurich at ZHdK, he crossed paths with brilliant designers who have since left their own imprint on the field, such as the duo Lisa Pepita Weiss + Claudia Klat, who established Pool Practice in Berlin; Jonas Wandeler, who launched the anarchistic Atlas Studio; and Dafi Kühne, the award-winning letterpress designer and printer. His studies at the HGB in Leipzig also connected him to artists such as Andrzej Steinbach, Arne Schmitt and Jana Schulz.

M.A.S.F. considers himself highly favored to work with a number of extremely smart and beautifully-minded developers, including Yuhao Yang and Andreas Faust (whom he also calls his “typeface king and queen.”). M.A.S.F. has also finally begun to explore the blockchain via metaverse with Aya Jaff and Danny O’Neill.

And lest he forget his longtime collaborator Michael Ullrich, the best photographer around wherever he may be, and Janna Shaw, the only copywriter that can cast a spell and hopefully make his bio sound less cringe. It was also through Ullrich (moonlighting as a drummer at certain concerts) that M.A.S.F. came to know the fashion designer Alexander Roys. And threaded through all of it is his BFF, artist and painter Lorenz Rost—a whizz-kid whose work continues to be a constant source of joy and inspiration.

That network grew further in Berlin through a joint venture with the production powerhouse Modes Dept. — born out of skateboarding and built to deliver campaigns with equal parts muscle and style. Out of that chapter came lasting connections: the homie Gerrit Piechowski (an early European skateboard video hero), Benjamin Markstein with his POSTER CA agency focused on cycling sports, and producer Johannes Lehmann, now rolling the Berlin office for 27km. Alongside them, M.A.S.F. also crossed paths with amazing collaborators such as Lara Casselman and the Berlin female-led production studio 11:40 around Ronja Prinz. Other notable but not less important mentions are Product Designer Christoph Hauf and the one to watch artist Marco Stanke.

Further and final shoutout to the best chef and developer on this planet, who also helped make this website of needed narcissism happen: Stefan Endres.

Michael Alfred Seibert Faigenbaum
Sudetentstraße 26
90542 Eckental
Germany

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