Designer Spotlight: Drew Davies
Location: Omaha, NE
Employment: Oxide Design Co., Founder & Design Director
Website: www.oxidedesign.com
Since I started my career as a graphic designer, his name has been a constant. Whether I was at an AIGA Show admiring his award-winning work, talking to one of his lucky interns, or flipping through his book, Drew Davies has been at the forefront of the design community. It is a pleasure to share our interview of Drew Davies for Illustrate Omaha. Enjoy!
What is your favorite part of the design process and why?
I’m fundamentally torn between two answers.
I believe deeply in the power of design thinking to solve complex problems. So one of my very favorite parts of the design process is the very earliest stage where the solutions are endless and you have to brainstorm with everything you’ve got to make sense of the scenario and begin to figure out what the best solution might be. It’s that stage where there’s still a very real possibility that there’s an absolutely perfect solution to the problem at hand, and with the right design thinking you can find it.
On the other hand, I come from a fine arts background, so for me there’s nothing quite like the visceral experience of putting pencil to paper and creating something. So my other favorite part of the design process is the sketching, scribbling, and thumbnailing that happens at the start of any given project. There’s something so immediate and so tangible about making marks by hand toward the goal of finding a really great solution.
What is the best advice you have ever received and why?
From a design standpoint, the best advice I ever got was to remember to engage in things other than design. In school, get yourself a liberal arts-style education: take courses on non-design topics like Biology, Constitutional Law, or Latin. When not at the office designing, enjoy other pastimes: painting, movies, stamp collecting. Make sure to travel whenever possible to experience new things, whether it’s to a different neighborhood, the next town over, or halfway around the globe. All the extra experiences in your life only serve to make your design better and more well-rounded. And taking time off from actively designing will allow great solutions to be percolating in your subconscious.
What have you learned from your fellow designers at Oxide?
I’ve struggled with this question for a long time because I learn important things on a daily basis from the team here at Oxide. It’s difficult to decide what one lesson I’d single out. But I’m extremely happy that’s the case, because it was always my dream to build a team of people who constantly make each other better. At the risk of leaving out hundreds of vital things I’ve learned from my fellow designers, I’ll give one good example from each of them.
Joe Sparano: If it’s not furthering the design solution, leave it out.
Adam Torpin: Never lose your passion for creating great design artifacts.
Drew Gourley: It’s just as important to craft a great code solution as a great visual solution.
What are some things that you do to break out of a creative rut?
Short answer: Walk away.
Longer answer: For all the value in getting creative inspiration from industry magazines and/or diving headlong into a creative problem, I think that all designers need downtime in order to make them the best designers they can be. Often times the best way to get out of a creative rut is to get away from the problem and do something completely unrelated. It’s the reason that Oxide has a policy that employees almost never work more than 40 hours a week. Time away from the office doing other things actually makes us better designers. Doesn’t matter if it’s appreciating a great television show, painting, visiting the Zoo, fixing your own water heater, or going scuba diving. Clearing your head allows space for great ideas to flow back in, usually when you least expect it.
Want to learn more about Drew? Check out a recent interview by Graphic Design USA.
