Tom Coolen

I’m Tom Coolen, a self-taught graphic designer and digital illustrator based in Hasselt, Belgium.

Operating under the moniker ‘Mad Leif’, my self-initiated work is designed to give you a quiet sort of understated inspiration. We spend so much of our time as people building our identities, just as a matter of functioning in the world. Preoccupied with endless to do lists and responsibilities and a daily dose of noise coming from many directions.

If I can provide a person with a moment of relief, happiness or positive reflection, then I like to think a seed of positivity has been planted.

The colours, gradients, shapes and patterns offer a short break, a focus on the light that's there, underneath it all. A bit like when you're in a forest and you manage to see sunlight coming through the branches.

The experimentation you can find within my designs is powered by the intensity of different emotions. Not only in the beauty of life, nature, both internal and external. It's also, or even more so important for me to find the meaning, or beauty, in even the most dire of feelings or circumstances.

Emotions can be a powerful material. I work this material into illustrations and designs. It is part of my growth as a designer, artist, and more importantly as a human being.

Modernist graphic design, abstract and visionary art(ists) as well as spiritual leaders like Terence McKenna, Alan Watts, Ram Dass & Eckhart Tolle have a huge influence on my work. I merge some of their thoughts and expressions with my own, and couple it with aspects of nature- a glimpse of sky through leaves, or a sunset whilst it's storming or something- to create something radically happy or sometimes just soothing.

The writer Scott Fitzgerald famously said, that the mark of intelligence is to hold two opposed ideas in mind, and still be able to function. I think the ultimate example of this is life itself. The madness of life is that it is both positive and negative all at once, simultaneously. Sometimes when all we can see is the negative, we have to believe in the positive. We have to call it out of its hiding places, bend it into shapes and colour it in.

And therein lies my mission, to spread positivity and beauty into the world, both in self-initiated work and projects and in collaboration with clients and brands who seek to do the same. Be it with branding, in the form of illustrations, typography, colour guidance, etc.