Andy is a twenty-year-old designer/craftsman/doer of things from West Chester Pennsylvania currently attending the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. He is passionate about riding bikes, climbing trees, wood, good music, and all things design. If he was able to make a living building things out of Legos and making rubber band guns, he would. Andy is also self-employed with Bonsai Studios, designing websites from midnight to 4am daily for nice people that e-mail him. You can read some of Andy’s personal thoughts and view his work at andymangold.com.
Current Project:
WordPress-powered blog for a nice man from New Zealand all about t-shirts, a website for a consulting agency focused on non-profit organizations that do good things for people, and of course a million things floating around in my head as always.
First step in my design process:
Research. Design is 100% about communication and one needs to be an expert on the idea, company, product, or movement he or she is going to communicate to the audience.
Usually I will read everything I can get my hands on about whatever project I am working on, then live my life as usual while rolling the idea around my head. I am not the kind of person that can sit down and just decide to design something, at least not something worthwhile. It is only when I am folding laundry, cooking up a mediocre stir fry, or polluting the airwaves with my Martin knockoff that I will think of something worth pursuing.
Aspect of design I give the highest priority:
Simplicity
Method for overcoming creative block:
Exercise. A nice bike ride or romp on the soccer field can do wonders when I am feeling bogged down and uncreative.
One typical myth about design:
That it needs to be done on a computer
Most challenging aspect about design:
Finding someone to pay you for working on the things that you think matter
Most underrated aspect of design:
It’s functionality and tangibility. Too many people have the perception that design is purely visual: they have no problem recognizing that the label on a bottle of Tide is design, but try explaining how a stool or a wrench is a beautiful (or terrible) piece of design and you’ve lost them. The term is almost infinitely broad, and to me that is why it is so powerful.
When I first knew I wanted to be a designer:
I had the idea all through High School that I wanted to be a designer, but when I got to college the sheer number of people in the major for what I consider to be all the wrong reasons made me question my choice intensely. Despite my attraction to other fields of study, I realized that calling myself anything else would only be limiting.
As I have said, design is about communication, and ultimately ideas. If the idea I am trying to express is going to be most powerful as a poster or a website then I will make a poster or a website. If the idea is going to be most powerful as a 47-foot found object sculpture then I’m off to the junkyard.
Inspirations:
Stefan Sagmeister, Stephen Doyle, Nam Jun Paik, Survival Research Labs, Fluxus, Odilon Redon, John Von Slatt, Marcel Duchamp, Theo Jansen
Favorite tool:
Manual hand drill passed down from my grandfather
Favorite design resource:
The city of Baltimore, with its rich personality and beautiful vestiges of signs and murals from yesteryear
The one typeface for a deserted island stay:
The capital “Q” in Wingdings would come in handy…
Bookmarks:
upsidedowndogs.com, fixedgeargallery.com, blog.makezine.com
Design-related book I highly recommend:
Things I have Learned in My Life So Far by Stefan Sagmeister
Currently (always) reading:
The Complete Calvin and Hobbes
Life lesson:
Don’t take yourself too seriously.
If I weren’t a designer, I’d be…
A carpenter, a bike courier, a struggling musician, a luthier, an engineer, or a mechanic
Favorite (non-design) past time:
Sleeping