Designer – Andy Sowards
Level – Category 1
Website – http://www.andysowards.com
Blog – http://www.andysowards.com/blog
Twitter – @andysowards

Andy Sowards playing with some of his 19 sons

 

1. How much time do you dedicate to learning design every day?
I TRY to learn for at least 2-3 hours a day, learn something new, or practice something new that I have been reading about, or heck, sometimes I only have time to THINK about learning something new. I really think that this step is crucial to advance, grow, and be successful in any field. So I definitely try to practice what I preach in that aspect.

 

2. What other designers do you have contact with on a regular basis?
I am contacting designers, developers, and programmers from all over the world on the daily, that’s just because I’m connected with so many great people on twitter and facebook and even in real life! But I would have to say that I am in contact with
Calvin Lee @mayhemstudios and
Khayyam Wakil @iamkhayyam the most out of anyone, they are extremely talented and super cool dudes.

 

3. Who are the top 2-3 designers that you respect and why?
I definitely have mad respect for lots of developers, some of my favs would have to be:
Fabio Sasso – Because he is the founder of the super successful and inspirational Abduzeedo, and he’s a nice guy.
Collis Ta’eed – He founded the ultra awesome and huge Envato Network, extremely talented individual.
Chris Spooner – He constantly turns out excellent tutorials on his blogs on the regular, and still finds time to design sites in his free time, its amazing!

 

4. What’s your favorite website or design you ever made and why?
As of right now, It would probably have to be my main blog, AndySowards.com – Just because I am ALMOST done with the redesign, and I have poured my heart and soul into the site, and have enjoyed working on it and watching it grow thus far. Although I am working on a few projects that could possibly trump it as my favorite, but they are not completed yet :)

Andy Sowards with the dew

5. Have you ever been published in a book or magazine? What books or magazines?
Why yes! Earlier this year I was mentioned in Web Designer Magazine, one of my fav mags! I was pretty honored to get the mention that pointed readers to the interview of mine that was up on their web site. I was almost published in Layers Magazine as well, but it ended up being online only. Hopefully I will end up in a few more before the year ends :) *Crosses fingers*

 

6. What’s your favorite color in hexadecimal? How often do you find yourself leaning towards it with design projects?
One of my favorite Hexidecimal colors is Andy Sowards web design colors#070707 – Simply because it’s black, without being black. It comes in handy so often! I never really was a ‘dark colors’ person until I started using it :)

 

7. What’s your most recent project we can look at?
One of the most recent projects I had the pleasure of working on was virl.com – I basically got to completely design the entire site and all the little features found high and low, I even got to code and program most of the site as well! It was a very fun project to be part of, and it felt good to have free reigns over the look, feel and functionality, the client provided the end goal, vision and suggestions along the way. Also, since I can do design, development and programming, I am best suited for and favor working on web application type sites that are very interactive and have back end databases with users and all that fun stuff. I feel that those are the type of projects that I excel at AND have the most fun with! I hope to finish a few more sites like this before the years end.