Robert Deodaat Emile (Ootje) Oxenaar studied fine arts at the Royal Academy in The Hague. From 1966 till 1985 he worked as a part-time designer for the Nederlandsche Bank, the country’s central bank. In that period he designed two series of banknotes. The first one was devoted to historic national figures. He designed the second series in collaboration with Hans Kruit. These applied various new printing and security techniques and rank among the finest of their time. Ootje was in charge of the Aesthetic Department of the Dutch Postal Administration, 1976–94, responsible for the development and implementation of its corporate identity and art collection. From 1979 to 1994 he served as a professor of industrial design at Delft University. Oxenaar designed several Dutch postage stamps, and has lectured at the Plantin Institute for Graphic Arts in Antwerp. He migrated to the US by the turn of the millennium and became involved in education at the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence.