Our team

The platform was initiated by Eva Hilhorst and Mara Joustra. With the financial aid of the Dutch Stimuleringsfonds voor de Journalistiek and the Stimuleringsfonds Creatieve Industrie, an innovative website was designed by De Ruimte Ontwerpers and built by Studio September.

Eva Hilhorst (editor in chief of Drawing the Times) works as a graphic journalist and illustrator. She thinks that the best thing about graphic journalism is that personal, drawn stories let the reader see the world from a different point of view. Graphic Journalism enriches the media in an attractive way.

Mara Joustra (editor at Drawing the Times) worked as a comics editor for 15 years at Oog & Blik. She strives to lift comics to a higher level. For Drawing the Times she focuses on showing that graphic journalism can have more impact due to its form than regular written articles.

Merel Barends (editor and author at Drawing the Times) has been working as a comic artist for years, and published several succesful journalistic comics. She especially likes the visual freedom of comics journalism. You can show places that no one could ever go and events that no camera witnessed. It’s a very direct, almost universal way to tell a story. Another important aspect to her is the room for visual humor. A drawing is a fantastic way to bring some light, some breeze into an otherwise serious issue, and to communicate dry, complex information in a fun, relatable way.