Javier leads the visual identity of Basis Set as our in-house Brand Designer, though most people know him as Monkey.

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Javier studied Fine Arts at Colombia's National University before earning a Master of Digital Media at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. His education gave him a foundation that spans the handmade and the digital, the expressive and the systematic, a tension he's spent his career turning into an advantage.

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His path to Basis Set winds through an unusually wide creative life. He began in Colombian agencies and brands, with a stint at McCann Erickson, while simultaneously building a reputation in Bogotá's underground scene as an illustrator and street artist. From there he moved into independent practice, tattooing, freelance design for clients like Philip Morris and HughesNet, and leading the Colombian folk punk band Aguas Ardientes as singer, songwriter, and banjoist for six years. His illustrations and street work were featured regularly in the Colombian underground press during this period. He then joined Duskwave Arts as Design Lead, where he shipped a narrative psychological game called Stuck in the Present, before joining Internet Backyard as a founding designer.

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Javier comes from a family of engineers with the souls of artists, people who taught him to love creative expression and the elegance of well-built systems in equal measure. That dual inheritance shapes everything he makes. He now lives in Vancouver with his wife and baby daughter.