Design Work Life: Cataloging Inspiration Daily

Andy Tran is a West Coast designer who mainly focuses on print-based work. When brows­ing his port­fo­lio, I was par­tic­u­larly intrigued in his poster designs, essen­tially because they embody a style so dif­fer­ent from my own. I’ve shown a few of them below, for which Andy was kind enough to pro­vide us with some back­ground information.

“The Best Advice“
The idea behind this say­ing encour­ages peo­ple not to focus on things keep­ing them from work­ing, learn­ing and pro­gress­ing. Doing things such as com­par­ing your­self to other design­ers is point­less; it’s like fight­ing the ocean: you’re never going to win. Someone will always be bet­ter than you, and some­one else will be bet­ter than that said per­son. The abil­ity to have fun means you can endure all the time, energy, money, etc. you put into your work. It’s all good, though, because you’re hav­ing fun.

”#YORO“
I really wanted to explore visu­al­iz­ing move­ment and the act of reunit­ing. The mix­ing of the lines and col­ors was done to express how all of us musi­cians have grown up and relo­cated, started fam­i­lies, etc. but for one night would get back together, just like the early 2000s.

“Money Makin’”
This poster is cur­rently run­ning in a design con­test held by A-Trak and Dillon Francis. The duo recently released a music video for their nu-disco/electro-house song “Money Makin’” where they dressed up as repair men who brought a bro­ken ATM to life. This danc­ing robot trav­eled through­out NYC along­side beau­ti­ful women to jam-packed par­ties. I decided early I wanted to draw influ­ence from the music video. The idea to have the poster “flip” came from want­ing to reflect the dance­able nature of the tune. The story of the robot began with it hav­ing a big smile on its face and even­tu­ally “flipped” to a sad one by the end.

“Malibu Melon Ice Cream“
I was imme­di­ately intrigued by Hattie Watson. I felt she had a very unique look in the world of street-wear fash­ion mod­els. The major­ity of this piece was based on exper­i­men­ta­tion. Since I was inter­pret­ing some­one else’s pho­to­graphic work, I thought it would be fun to have other design­ers and artists do the same with my design. I con­tacted some friends as well as strangers and received five very inter­est­ing takes on this piece.