Matijs was born and raised in a very creative household in Leeuwarden, the capitol of Friesland in The Netherlands. His parents are very passionate and professional (classical) musicians and he is the great-grand child of the well known architect Gerrit Th. Rietveld. Matijs graduated with honor under direction of Gijs Bakker (co-founder of the famous Droog Design) at the Design Academy in Eindhoven. His final graduation projects (1996) - a 'Magnetic Case' and promotional articles - received the Dutch Furniture Award and the Talent Trophy at the Annual Advertising Awards (Art Directors Club Nederland). The 'Magnetic Case' has since been entered into the permanent collection of the Centraal Museum Utrecht, The Netherlands. The two designs he made for the contemporary jewelry-label ChiHaPAura?? are a part of the collection of Museum of Contemporary Arts, Den Bosch, The Netherlands. In 1996 Matijs joined the DroogDesign label, a period viewed as "the glory years" of Droog Design. He did some notable projects with Droog, including the exhibition 010101 at MOMA San Francisco, USA. One of Matijs' other favorite design-related jobs is computer-generated imagery (CGI), a field in which he has 16 years’ experience. To catch the true essence of a product in a design or in one image can be quite puzzling. But Matijs loves to take on those kind of challenges! He also has a great eye for the smallest details but without ever losing sight of the big picture and he prefers to keep things basic and simple. Matijs likes to think outside of the box and believes that most problems are not there to be solved but simply need to be avoided. Humor, modesty, honesty, sincerity and a real passion for beautiful things, people, languages and music are the key words used to describe his character, life and his multidisciplinary design works.