Mal Som is an artist from Cambodia, raised in LA, now based in Berlin. Growing up in the US as a first-generation Cambodian with a Buddhist upbringing, his personal philosophies married ancient Eastern views with modern Western pop-culture beliefs. That marriage shows up in all of his work.
Mal works where design and engineering meet. He’s most useful in the gap between them.
Over the past decade he’s shipped motion design systems at scale, built generative pipelines, and written the code that made the designs run.
He prefers systems that do what they say, and stay out of the way.
He picks what to make by chasing a spark of excitement. When a few directions light up at once, he may run more than one.
Craft is building up and cutting back. He removes what doesn’t earn its place so the core can hold more energy.
