Design Stories: How Creative Melissa Lissone’s past has shaped her present
Tags: Fintech, Design

Adyen, for all intents and purposes, is a fintech company. But in industry-label only.

The company is more than just a payment solution. There’s a certain culture behind Adyen — one without hierarchy, without ego. But with plenty of style and panache. This really is a band of rebels, or self-proclaimed misfits.

From designers to developers to marketing geniuses. This is the real competitive advantage for the company known for dominating an industry.

One incredible team member is Creative, Melissa Lissone.

Melissa’s tale is the first of many stories we’ll share in our Design Stories — a new way to hear from Adyen about their experience, early successes, and tips for creating great designs.

How it all began

Melissa always loved to create things and started studying at a school where she was introduced with different ways to be creative — including photography, 3D furniture design, creating videos, graphic design and even setting up window shops.

Though she really wanted to get her bachelor’s, Melissa felt an ‘art academy’ would be too artsy as she tended to lean more towards the commercial side of design — focusing more on problem solving and work with briefings.

“For me it’s important to make sense of the design I’m creating and have a good concept behind it.”

So she ditched the traditional route of art school and instead studied at the prestigious University of Lincoln, where the focus was more on concept development. This piqued an interest in the theory where Melissa went on to study applied creativity at Amsterdam’s Hallo Academy.

Keeping it in the family

Growing up with two older brothers, Melissa was interested in technology from a young age. As she explains,

“My brothers would explain how technology worked — from DVD players to computers. But they always said each lesson would happen only once. So I needed to pay close attention, and that’s what I did.”

At the ripe age of 11, Melissa was installing CD drives for friends. But it wasn’t just her sibling’s fascination that influenced her love affair with technology.

A photographer from Indonesia — a part of the world synonymous with being head of the latest tech trends — Melissa’s grandfather was usually one of the first to implement color into photographs in the Netherlands. Melissa remembers visiting her grandfather and every week he’d pull out a new lens or filter or any myriad of photography-related tech. They would ooh and ahh and play around with the latest innovation together.

Her father was also influential in her life — always bringing home old computers from work. In fact, there wasn’t a time in her life that she can’t remember tinkering around with gadgets. To this day, her father still proudly shows off his latest geeky find from eBay.

Ironically enough, her father was an IT specialist at a bank. So when Melissa had the chance to work for in fintech, it was the perfect continuation to her upbringing and interests, and she felt at home in the industry.

From freelancing to full-time

Upon the arrival of her first born (Melissa is actually expecting number two in September), she realized that with freelancing, there wasn’t much of a routine, often making it difficult to find a rhythm for her son.

Having noticed that more and more companies and brands were establishing their own creative departments in-house made her wonder how it would be on the “other” side.

But just how much greener the grass is on the other side of the “freelance” fence?

Melissa, with plenty already on her table as full-time mom and full-time art director, also found herself cofounder of a new business venture. This is where the pros of structure overcame the cons of routine.