Andrew Brown on Authenticity, Passion and Technology in Design
Andrew is a design director living in Greater London, originally from the Southeast coast. He has over 10 years of experience in events and experiential design, and has previously worked in retail design across the automotive and banking sectors.
Specialising in creating and designing brand led spaces and experiences, Andrew has been with TRO for nearly six years, bringing his creative vision to projects for clients such as BMW, Just Eat Takeaway, British Airways, and Nissan. When he’s not designing, Andrew can be found out on (or falling down) the slopes snowboarding in the winter or grilling behind the BBQ in the summer.
LBB> Tell us about your current role and design specialism(s)?
Andrew> I am currently the design director at TRO, a role I have been doing for nearly two years. As far as specialism(s), I would probably describe myself as a bit of a jack of all trades, or a do it all designer. Studying product design gave me a good insight into a broad range of design specialties and more importantly, a desire to problem-solve and learn, which is an attitude I have tried to take forward into my career.
I think this mindset has given me a holistic and well-rounded overview of the design industry. On a typical project, this may take me from creative concepting one day, graphic design treatments the next, then on to spatial design in 3D through to production drawings.
What I really enjoy about my current role in experiential marketing is that it leans into these broad set of design skills to help me create a real variety of brand driven spaces.
LBB> What drew you to design in the first place and how has your design career evolved?
Andrew> I was always interested in art and design as a kid, my mum loves to paint in her spare time and my grandad was an architect, so I guess you can say design runs in my blood!
Since I was 10 years old, I have always loved to design using computers. This will show my age, but I remember getting our first family computer and it had a game called Microsoft Fine Artist (essentially an elevated version of MS paint) and I loved to experiment and create designs within it.
Looking back, I guess I was probably at the intersection of traditional manual pen and paper design vs computer aided design. I feel like I have grown up using technology to help me solve creative problems and articulate my ideas more clearly, so you could say, what I do now, is essentially an evolution of that.
LBB> What aspects of design do you get really nerdy about personally?
Andrew> For me, it’s the technical side of 3D design, it’s building the models, texturing, lighting and setting up my scenes for render. I can get super detailed with it. I really enjoy exploring the software(s) to learn new things and find different and interesting ways to use the tools which helps to elevate my designs or to do things more efficiently, and usually it’s all completely self-taught.
LBB> There are so many new design tools out - what tools do you like to use and why? (whether digital platforms or old fashioned pen and paper!)
Andrew> Currently Cinema 4D with Corona for 3D based work. Coming from 3DSmax, C4D was a more user friendly and intuitive alternative, the addition of Corona really helps to elevate the final visual output. Finally, a standard answer, but Adobe creative suite for everything else really but have been dabbling in a bit of AI for early concepting of images.
LBB> Design Thinking - thoughts?
Andrew> In the simplest of terms, as designers, we always start with a problem (brief) and we need to research, ideate, test and develop to distil down to come up with a solution to solve it (output). There are several different trains of thought on how you get there, but ultimately, everyone has their own way of working. So I believe it’s best to choose the thinking which works for you and the project.
Sometimes on a project you can just get a sense of what is the right solution quite quickly without the need for much of a process. However, when the solution to the problem is less apparent and requires more work, this is when some more structured design thinking can be helpful.
It can be helpful for designers to explain the basics of design thinking to other departments and clients in the form of a process. I have found that this can help in a couple of ways:
1) It highlights the need for allowing an appropriate amount of time to get from A-B.
2) It brings them on the journey which helps to create a more collaborative process, on route to an output that they feel more connected with.
LBB> What are the most persistent misconceptions about your particular design specialism that you see across the advertising and marketing landscape?
Andrew> Currently, that AI image generation can design. In my experience and in its current guise, it is a really useful tool to conceptualise and quickly mock-up ideas, but it falls down when you start to get too specific or ask it to iterate. It’s important to remember that only a creative mind can correctly ‘create and curate’ the prompts in the first place.
LBB> Accessible design is an increasingly prominent topic - from your experience what are the most challenging facets of accessible design? And what does best practice in accessible design in your particular design specialism look like?
Andrew> This is a tricky one as there are so many different accessibility needs to consider, especially in the world of experiential marketing when we are showing up in real life at festivals and events.
Despite best intentions, it’s not always possible to cater to everyone, but I think we always go into projects thinking about it as inclusive design to ensure what we deliver is as relevant and user friendly to the widest range of people as possible.
For example, if we take a usual Goodwood Festival of Speed stand, we would have to consider clear access routes on and around the stand, leave appropriate spacing between elements, clear and visible signage, appropriate ramping, amplified sound etc. so that everyone can get the full experience.
LBB> What design controversies or challenges do you find trickiest to navigate or do you find yourself thinking about most frequently?
Andrew> Getting full buy in from the key stakeholders in projects to think and act more sustainably. There is a lot of talk across all industries about wanting to be more sustainable but ultimately as soon as challenges arise, and costs increase there is usually, unfortunately, push back.
One thing that we try to do as an agency is to get clients on board with re-using or re-purposing created assets at multiple events to prolong their life. As a designer, the small changes we can make include: making things easy to disassemble at end of life to be recycled or reused, limit the use of adhesives as this can affect recycling of raw materials and where possible, work with suppliers that have the same desire to work more sustainably.
LBB> How do you think about the ethics of design?
Andrew> Many years ago, I told a colleague that as a designer (in our industry) “we just design landfill” I was obviously being glib but there is some truth in there. As designers and creators, we are unfortunately part of the problem, but the good news is, we can also form part of the solution. It is not going to be an overnight switch, but by getting colleagues and clients on board with more sustainable thinking, hopefully we can start to move the needle in the right direction as an industry and try and do our bit.
LBB> What are some of your favourite examples of creative design solutions that inspire you?
Andrew> The ones where I get a sense of professional jealousy, the ideas that are so simple but yet hit the perfect tone, where I think “I wish I had thought of that!”.
One recent experiential example I really liked is Es Devlin’s, 'Reels Cinema' (for Meta) at Cannes – it is easy to understand, with a clean, simple, mono colour execution that fits into a culturally relevant niche.
Another slightly different example that I thought was really clever recently was the Thanks for Coke-Creating campaign – leaning into the fandom and local interpretations of the iconic logo and rather than shutting them down (as so many brands would) they embraced and hero-ed them in a global campaign. For a huge global brand like coke to be so openly flippant with their own identity was very refreshing (no pun intended).
LBB> Which design projects throughout your career have been the most satisfying to work on and why?
Andrew> As a keen football and Arsenal fan I have to say when I got to design the new hospitality box (and youth team rec room at Hale End) for adidas at the Emirates stadium when they took over shirt sponsorship from Nike.
It was great to be involved with two high profile brands. My knowledge of the club and being a fan helped to create a design that referenced adidas’ history with Arsenal. Those little details really elevated the design. As so often is the case, the final design changed from what was pitched but a couple of examples of these elements that were included in the original design were adding a crossed-out item to the menu board (spurs lasagne) and taking the classic retro ‘bruised banana’ kit pattern and applying it to the upholstery.
Little did I know at the time, adidas planned to re-release that kit and also lean into the retro vibes.
LBB> What’s going on at the moment in design that’s getting you particularly excited?
Andrew> The push towards creating more authentic output for brands. I think, and hope, most creatives are quite in tune with the world, and I have seen a positive shift in the last few years to be more human centric, sustainable, inclusive and culturally relevant. This is exciting because it has been easy for brands to hide behind their big shiny corporate appearance and it’s good to see them breaking down barriers to connect with people at a more human level.
LBB> Who are your design heroes and why?
Andrew> I’d have to say Jony Ive. As a student studying product design in the early/mid 2000’s when Apple and specifically the iPod became a huge part of the public consciousness, I really admired the way he talked about simplicity and clarity of design. Other designers who I admire are Oki Sato (Nendo) for the beautiful considered simplicity of his work, Es Devlin and Olafur Eliasson for combining works of art with human experiences and Thomas Heatherwick for all the solar punk inspired architectural creations.
LBB> Thinking of people at the beginning of their career, what advice would you give them for navigating this constantly changing field?
Andrew> Here are 4 top tips…
- Embrace technology and evolve with it, learn how you can use it to help you be more creative.
- Try to take on everything that comes your way, everything is a challenge to overcome and learn from. You don’t know you can’t do something until you try it, and you will probably surprise yourself.
- Don’t feel like you need to know everything straight out of university, only by doing, experimenting, successes and most importantly, failures do you learn.
- Collaborate and learn from those around you, be inquisitive, open and willing to learn.
