Yippiehey's smart type-based designs are as joyful as his name

With a name like Yippiehey, you’d expect German designer and illustrator Jacob Eisinger’s work to be full of joy, skipping about like it’s the first day of spring and you’ve just won a tenner on a scratch card. Indeed, it is rather joyful; but it’s more than that, with the designer boasting a portfolio bursting with smart type-driven designs and CGI prowess. 

Yippiehey’s design career began later than most, when he decided at 26 years old to go to design school. “I always tried to be creative with different techniques but I felt I needed to take a bigger step,” he says. Having focussed on graphic design and typography, his love for illustration blossomed during an internship at I Love Dust, which turned into a year-long placement. It was there that he learned how to use Cinema 4D which became his passion, “and I figured I might be able to make a living out of it.”

Based in Hamburg and represented by agency JSR, Yippiehey’s working day sounds enviable, beginning with “one or two episodes of some TV series.” So far, so Slackers – but his work tells a more rigorous story. “Working with type I try to do as much custom type work I can since I really love the process of creating letterforms,” he says. “Most of the time I prefer to work up concepts on paper or Photoshop, do rough sketches or put together mockups so building everything in 3D is much more straightforward.”

His smart, slick but often playful creations have secured a client list including  EMI, Traffic and Oxfam, but Yippiehey says the ideal client is one who “lets you explore your style even further.” And while these credentials are all well and good, the question we’ve really been desperate to ask is: what’s with the name?

“ To be honest, that was my very first internet user name for my first email address back in 1998,” he confesses. “I played a PS1 game based on Die Hard and the guy always said the classic phrase ‘yippee ki yay…’ When I signed up my first email address that was the first thing that came into my mind, but I kind of misspelled it. However, I used it for everything ever since.”