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Interview with Andrew Marcus |
Home > Designer Interviews > Andrew Marcus |
Editor Frank Scott (FS) from DesignPRWire has interviewed designer Andrew Marcus (AM) for A’ Design Award and Competition. You can access the full profile of Andrew Marcus by clicking here.
FS: Could you please tell us more about your art and design background? What made you become an artist/designer? Have you always wanted to be a designer?
AM: I never thought that I would become a designer. I've always been a technician. In school, I studied in a physics-mathematics class. Among all universities, I chose an Aviation Institute and studied a course similar to computer science. I was taught quantum mechanics, electrical engineering, and programming. Can you believe that my first job was as a computer virus analyst? I was still a student back then, and worked just three days a week. Five months was enough for me to realize that I hated this job. You dig into somebody's binary code and write some procedures, millions of which go into a huge antivirus software. What's the point? This is so abstract, you don't feel any feedback from your work. One day while sitting in the office, I realized that I wanted to SEE what I do. I came up with an idea to start a company that creates projects with outstanding design. In half a year, the company was opened, shares were distributed, and a business plan was written. Only then did I realize that I didn't have a single designer among my friends and I wasn't able to afford to hire a good one. "Well, it seems that I have to become a designer," I said to my co-founders. That's how it started.
FS: Can you tell us more about your company / design studio?
AM: My first studio was called Love Media. I wanted to call it simply "Love," but this name was already taken. Although the studio never achieved major commercial success, it quickly became recognizable. We launched City Courier, the first geolocation-based delivery service. In 2013, we created an amazing site for the so-called "Russian Ball," which took place in London's Albert Hall on the 400th anniversary of the Romanov tsar dynasty. The site had a pre-revolutionary style, and we also designed a coat-of-arms. Later, we designed a great mobile app for Cubic.ai, a smart-home startup from California. For five years in a row, Love Media was included in the Top-100 best mobile developers by CMS Magazine. I closed this studio in 2020, during the pandemic, and applied to work at Skybonds, a complex financial analytics platform that controls banks' assets. There, I created a new design language for data tables and market graphs, and wrote several scientific articles on how to design complex data interfaces. In 2023, I started a new studio. It is called Planeta and it is based in New York. Let's see what the new era holds.
FS: What is "design" for you?
AM: A friend once posed this question to me. This was at a party, in front of a table. I simply picked up a cup from it and said, "Look, this is an interface," holding the cup by its handle. Many designers think about design in terms of beauty, but as Steve Jobs said, "Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works." Everything you see at home has a design. Cups, lamps, shirts, shoes. You interact with these objects using handles, switches, buttons, laces, which are essentially interfaces. So, every single thing has a design that was created by someone. This person should be called a "designer," whether they realize it or not.
FS: What kinds of works do you like designing most?
AM: Something different from the previous one. Our brain responds best to changes; it's hardly capable of doing the same work for a long time. I always aim to design a project that is different from the one I'm currently working on. At my last job at Skybonds, I worked extensively with data tables, graphs, and infographics. It's an exciting job, but it can also be exhausting. It takes a lot of energy to stay focused on infinite numbers and charts. That's why I made a switch and created Talbica, my startup for interactive chemistry. It's full of animations, photos, and 3D models. Sometimes, I worked on this project after my regular workday. Even though I was busy for up to 12 hours a day, I never felt tired. As they say, "The best rest is a change of activity."
FS: What is your most favorite design, could you please tell more about it?
AM: I'm in love with Telegram. Words are not enough to describe how brilliant this app is. It's called a messenger, but it's actually an alternative web. They've combined messaging, news, channels, groups, video calls, a marketplace, and even AI tools. The magic is that despite having all these functions, Telegram looks extremely simple. The best interface is the one you don't have to think about. Another example is ChatGPT. Did you know that the same version of it was released in early 2022, a year before it gained worldwide fame? The only difference was the absence of an interface. Later, they added this chat-like interface, and it took off. I guess these examples are probably not what you expected to hear. Well, I like Apple's Vision Pro too, but isn't that too obvious?
FS: What was the first thing you designed for a company?
AM: It was a personal account page for a local network. At that time, we didn't have unlimited internet, and setting it up was quite complex. Users had to purchase scratch cards and top up their balance from their personal page within the local network. The existing interface was ugly and inconvenient, so I came up with a new, more visually appealing design. I designed a mockup of the scratch card and decorated the input box with elements resembling the scratch layer. The idea was to guide new users on where to type the top-up code, as the old page had multiple fields. Additionally, I wanted to educate clients, so I created a scheme with icons representing a computer, router, and cloud. It illustrated how the internet connection worked. In case of an outage, a part of the scheme was labeled with a red cross icon to indicate the issue.
FS: What is your favorite material / platform / technology?
AM: Of course, Figma has surpassed everyone. I had many reservations about Sketch when it first appeared, and continued using Photoshop for a long time after. But Figma won my heart. I work on an iMac and MacBook Air.
FS: When do you feel the most creative?
AM: When I'm working. I once read a quote by renowned photographer Chuck Close in a museum: "Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work." That's how I feel. When I was an amateur, I used to wait for "inspiration" too. You know, changing the environment, trying dozens of types of teas, switching music. Now, I feel the most creative after I just start working, not vice versa.
FS: Which aspects of a design do you focus more during designing?
AM: In general, I always keep focused on the task I try to solve. Speaking about details, I love working with data. It is a painstaking work to design a clean and readable data table, chart or diagram, dashboard or set of widgets. It requires a lot of attention and knowledge of typography, data formatting, grammar, syntax, etc. It also need knowledge of the topic. If I design a data table or dashboard for a financial platform, I need to understand the finance. Overall, I focus more on typography, readability of data, and grammar of text.
FS: What kind of emotions do you feel when you design?
AM: It always starts with a bit of resistance. It's always hard to start something new. Then I slowly delve into the process and... boom! Four hours have passed. Usually, I find myself working for many hours after I've solved the general task. If I have, I feel a deep satisfaction. If I haven't, I feel a bit disappointed. Sometimes it's hard to stop until the job is done, but we all have to eat, drink, and sleep.
FS: What kind of emotions do you feel when your designs are realized?
AM: The greatest satisfaction is seeing the design implemented by the developer, whether it's a website or an interface. I never feel better than when I see my design come to life. Looking at a finished design in Figma is also a pleasure, but it cannot be compared to seeing it actually working. By the way, I've designed several free typefaces. Some of them have gained popularity, and occasionally I come across them in someone else's design, such as a sign, book cover, or title. It's incredibly cool to just walk around and see your work living its own life!
FS: What makes a design successful?
AM: What makes a book successful? Chance, actually. But a designer can increase this chance by following best practices and by pouring their soul into their work. However, just like we all have read outstanding books that aren't successful, there are plenty of designs that haven't received the attention they deserve. This doesn't mean the designer shouldn't even try or should work in a lazy manner. On the contrary, one should never give up.
FS: When judging a design as good or bad, which aspects do you consider first?
AM: I consider whether the design solves the task it was created to solve. Some designs might seem "bad" because they're outdated or not fancy, but they can solve their tasks much better than a contemporary, highly animated promo-interface that doesn't fulfill any useful purpose.
FS: From your point of view, what are the responsibilities of a designer for society and environment?
AM: I was surrounded by poorly designed things as I was growing up. It took me years to overcome this unfortunate aesthetic and realize that what I was seeing was far from normal. Design, much like art, nurtures good taste and enhances our everyday lives in numerous ways. It is our responsibility to cultivate this.
FS: How do you think the "design field" is evolving? What is the future of design?
AM: Two things will determine the future of design: Artificial Intelligence and Spatial Computing. I've already started using ChatGPT. It comes in handy when I need to write placeholder texts, come up with a brand name, or create personas. It's not yet useful for drawing and prototyping, but that's only a matter of time. Of course, I'm not afraid that it can replace me. On the contrary, I believe it will become a great assistant and optimize my work. As prominent mathematician and Nobel Prize laureate in Physics, Roger Penrose, stated, it's impossible to create artificial intelligence on a Turing machine, which all modern computers essentially are. Regarding Spatial Computing, its future depends on the success of devices like Apple's Vision Pro and other augmented reality devices. It seems we will see a new kind of interface, one which overlays icons, windows, and panels directly onto real-world objects. I haven't had the opportunity to work with such devices yet, but I've already published a short article about adapting Fitts' law for them.
FS: Where does the design inspiration for your works come from? How do you feed your creativity? What are your sources of inspirations?
AM: My inspiration comes from the real world. I travel a lot, having visited 75 countries and planning to visit them all. This is how I feed myself with good examples of design. You see, if you travel that much, you encounter thousands of examples of design every day. You become a user of all those things that have been created by designers from all over the world. It's your personal user testing. In every new city, you have to use bus or metro maps, diagrams, ticket machines, read posters, advertisements, signs, schedules, press buttons, toggle switches, and so on. This is where the experience - and inspiration - comes from. You'll never design anything like a New York subway map after you see a scheme of the Moscow metro. It's impossible to create anything as monstrous as a ticket machine interface in Spain after you have used one in The Netherlands. Not to mention the heaps of typefaces, signs, captions, ornaments, decorations, colors, palettes, etc. you see in every new country. They all are so different. That's inspiration! Choose any of them!
FS: How would you describe your design style? What made you explore more this style and what are the main characteristics of your style? What's your approach to design?
AM: I design the simplest things you've ever seen. It's even hard to understand what constitutes my work, essentially. Well, that's a compliment. The best interfaces are always invisible. I guess sometimes my work can be underestimated for that reason: they look too simple. I believe you have to start using them for real tasks, then the understanding should come. I put enormous effort into accounting for all minor scenarios. For example, in my award-winning project, Talbica: Interactive Chemistry, you can navigate through the list of reactions with keyboard shortcuts. There are dozens of key combos. I don't remember them myself, but when I open my project, I use them intuitively. I like hidden features and shortcuts. They are attributes of a good interface.
FS: Where do you live? Do you feel the cultural heritage of your country affects your designs? What are the pros and cons during designing as a result of living in your country?
AM: That could be a whole other interview. I'm what they call a digital nomad. I've been to 75 countries, including popular ones like Italy, as well as more exotic ones like Saudi Arabia and Tanzania. Speaking about cultural heritage, I recently visited the Omo River valley in Ethiopia. People from various tribes live there, one of the most famous being the Mursi. They are well-known for their tradition of inserting large, ornamented plates into their bottom lip and ears. I visited them during my trip and am still under their impression. How can this affect my design? Well, I think humans can't completely comprehend these processes. When you see different cultures and meet different people, something activates inside you. You become more open-minded, and you understand human psychology better. Design is all built around perception, behavior, and psychology. Somehow, you absorb this knowledge, and suddenly it starts working. You just feel what people need and love.
FS: How do you work with companies?
AM: When I had a studio, I felt like Shiva with eight hands. Some may say that I didn't know how to delegate. Perhaps, but design requires a deep immersion into the process. I always started with a briefing session. After a short interview, I composed a commercial offer for the client and emailed it. The offer consisted of three sections: 1) Problem, 2) Solution, 3) Plan. Once we signed the contract, I would create an extensive technical proposal. This document differed greatly from the brief and contained a complete description of the project's structure, pages, navigation, technologies, and more. I rarely followed this document strictly. Design outcomes always took priority over the technical proposal. By the way, I had no limitations on the number of iterations. Clients generally had their deadlines and were not keen on endless edits. This approach worked best for new products. For ongoing projects, we would use Agile, of course. Design is a never-ending process: assess, design, receive feedback, repeat.
FS: What are your suggestions to companies for working with a designer? How can companies select a good designer?
AM: I see a disaster happening with design in big companies. Employers hire the "best of the best" designers, who I guess could have received PhDs in design, if they existed. They know hundreds of UX research methods, use top-notch usability practices, and know how to use eye-tracking, nose-turning, and mouth-following techniques. Still, just look at Facebook. It is impossible to use, despite the thousands of A/B tests they claim to run at the same time. I think design is in crisis. It tries to become a science, using numbers and statistics. But science is built on vision. A discovery starts with a groundbreaking hypothesis, then comes an experiment and only later is it confirmed with figures. If the Wright brothers built plane wings blindly following the lift equation, they would have never invented the first plane. The formula contained an error.
FS: Can you talk a little about your design process?
AM: It always starts with good old research. What task am I solving? Who is it for? How is this task solved by others? Who are these "others," and what strengths and weaknesses do they have? Once these questions are answered, I can start designing something. Let's say a prototype. Actually, I often skip this step and create a moodboard instead. Then I design the first version of the interface. I adhere to the "progressive JPEG" methodology. My design is ready for production right from the start, and the more I work on it, the more details it receives. Professional designers understand that design is a never-ending process. After each step, you review your design (or ask your users) and prepare a list of next improvements. This cycle remains active as long as the project is alive. Finally, after the design is released I use my work. Why is it important to use it? Only when you really love your work and contemplate it, can you notice those tiny details that it may miss. Attention to detail is what makes the best design.
FS: What are 5 of your favorite design items at home?
AM: I like rare books; does that count as design? I guess it does. Recently, I've purchased Benoit Mandelbrot's masterpiece, "The Fractal Geometry of Nature". It's not only full of fractals, but it's also an example of outstanding typography. Other examples include: my favorite coffee cup, a microwave with a turn dial (I hate buttons), Philips Hue colorful bulbs, and a bronze rhinoceros beetle shoe horn.
FS: Can you describe a day in your life?
AM: As I mentioned before, I'm a digital nomad and have visited 75 countries. So, the first 30 minutes after I wake up, I try to remember which country I am in. Just kidding. It happens during the night; in the morning, I already know it. Wherever I am, I always start with a cup of coffee. Right now, I'm in the US, and they always drink Americano here. I miss Cappuccino so much, oh boy. Thankfully, they sell lots of creamers in Walmart. I cannot live without coffee. It's always a ceremony. I drink coffee on an empty stomach and start working without breakfast. I got this idea from market traders. They believe you stay more focused when you're hungry. Like, in the wild, if you're hungry, you need to hunt and find food, right? I have breakfast after several hours of work, and it's usually very light. Then I rest for an hour. Let's skip the boring part and jump to the evening. After I have finished my "main job," I rarely go chilling. Design is a part of my life, so I continue working on minor projects. The trick is to choose a proper task, different from the previous one. If your main job is about financial interfaces, go design a promo page!
FS: Could you please share some pearls of wisdom for young designers? What are your suggestions to young, up and coming designers?
AM: Make-it-simple.
FS: From your perspective, what would you say are some positives and negatives of being a designer?
AM: The only negative is my deteriorating vision due to too much screen time. Using night mode helps, but it's not a cure-all. The rest is positive. I create something and see the results of my work. This is the most important thing for me.
FS: What is your "golden rule" in design?
AM: I would say, "eat your own dog food". If you don't use your own work, you cannot elaborate on all the little details and make it perfect.
FS: What skills are most important for a designer?
AM: Attention to details, readiness to study for the whole life, ability to love the world you live in.
FS: Which tools do you use during design? What is inside your toolbox? Such as software, application, hardware, books, sources of inspiration etc.?
AM: Let me go ahead and answer another question. Which tools would I not recommend using? Most articles, how-to videos, and blogs about design. I would recommend simply ignoring them. They mostly create noise, and it's very hard to find anything truly valuable in these sources. Today, we're overloaded with information, and we must filter it. The best way is to read books. The older, the better. Start with Jef Raskin's "The Humane Interface", published in 2000. He was the creator of the MacOS interface back in the 1980s. This book is so fundamental that it simply cannot become outdated, unlike those blogs and how-tos that become old the next day after they're published.
FS: Designing can sometimes be a really time consuming task, how do you manage your time?
AM: I use the "progressive JPEG" method, which was described by the famous designer Artemy Lebedev. It resembles some agile techniques, but is more precise. You've probably seen how JPEG files load. There are two methods of compression: standard and progressive. Standard JPEG images load line-by-line from top to bottom. You cannot see the whole image until it has loaded. On the other hand, progressive JPEGs load immediately, but in lower quality. You can see the entire image from the start, but it appears blurry. During the download process, the image becomes more and more detailed. I use this technique in design to manage my time. My design is ready right from the start. Yes, it is not detailed, but I can already show it to my client and discuss it. You might call it a low-fidelity prototype, but it's not. A prototype is a simplification. I don't simplify anything, I just omit some details and treat the design as final from the very beginning.
FS: How long does it take to design an object from beginning to end?
AM: As long as you wish, or as long as you are able to too work on it. Design is about solving tasks, and tasks have reasonable terms. A masterpiece of design is worthless if it's finished long after the project's release date. Conversely, a simplistic but functional design can be invaluable if it's completed within tight deadlines.
FS: What is the most frequently asked question to you, as a designer?
AM: People always ask how I became a designer. I don't know why it provokes so much interest. There's nothing special about this story; it was just an accident, like with most people. Being a designer is just one profession among hundreds of others. Someone has to be a designer!
FS: What was your most important job experience?
AM: Running my design studio, of course. You have to be everything-at-once. I was an Art Director, a Head of Development, I interviewed clients, and tried to promote my business. Oh, I even did accounting! Sometimes I thought, what for? Well, you cannot get rich running such a company. But it gives you a lot of experience and knowledge. You become antifragile, as Nassim Taleb said.
FS: Who are some of your clients?
AM: From startup founders who try to change the world to mature entrepreneurs who don't want to take risks. I have created several startups, such as a delivery service with geolocation named City Courier, a "second screen" mobile app for a movie channel, and a smart home application for Cubic.ai, a startup from Silicon Valley. I have also worked on dozens of corporate sites, mostly for mid-sized businesses, and developed a financial platform for one of the largest banks in Western Europe. Speaking of renowned brands, I have worked with Channel One, Bayer, Motul, Sovcombank, Bonduelle, and Heliport.
FS: What type of design work do you enjoy the most and why?
AM: I like creating complex interfaces. You know, the ones that have a large design system, dozens of screens, tree-like navigation, lots of numeric data, diagrams, charts, etc. Why? Because when you solve this puzzle and everything suddenly assembles into a logical interface, you feel so proud!
FS: What are your future plans? What is next for you?
AM: Well, I've just opened a new design studio in New York. Let's see!
FS: Do you work as a team, or do you develop your designs yourself?
AM: It depends. I am a designer and developer in one person. Talbica: Interactive Chemistry is created by me alone. I designed and programmed both the website and mobile apps. However, when working with clients, I focus solely on design, and the development is handled by a team.
FS: Any other things you would like to cover that have not been covered in these questions?
AM: Travel, and travel a lot.
FS: Thank you for providing us with this opportunity to interview you.
A’ Design Award and Competitions grants rights to press members and bloggers to use parts of this interview. This interview is provided as it is; DesignPRWire and A' Design Award and Competitions cannot be held responsible for the answers given by participating designers.
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