We had the recent opportunity to host Andrew Herzog as a guest lecturer. As a designer, artist, and entrepreneur, Andrew works in a variety of mediums using his creative wit for both commercial clients and passion projects. Over the course of the evening, Andrew referenced a series of slides concerning wide-ranging topics such as the importance of art exploration and having a skill set that can earn money.
Students and members of the public absorbed by Andrew’s presentation
Early in his career, Andrew worked at Google Creative Lab where he met two individuals with whom he started a design technology studio called HAWRAF. (The name stands for a sound and is not an acronym.) In this venture he found freedom through design constraints, enjoying being able to create amazing things from a limited set of tools. One particularly rewarding task was redesigning Google Creative Lab’s application process, with designers and developers playing around in limited code and creating whatever they wanted. To Andrew’s surprise, the participants made products he could not have imagined. While the HAWRAF studio is now defunct, the founders’ mission to make the design process interactive was a success.
HTML creation from a Google Creative Lab applicant
Andrew has amassed the skills to focus on interactivity no matter the medium. During the Unfinished Festival of 2018, Andrew wanted to devise a way to make the outside of the museum space compelling for visitors. He concocted an idea to create a white painted circle around the National Museum of Art of Romania, an installation now dubbed “Circle or Curve.” Andrew spoke about the complexities of mixing the biodegradable paint himself, as well as the awkwardness of pursuing municipality buy-in for such an obscure project.
Andrew’s final message for the audience was that “experience is better than advice,” reasoning that external input can only take an individual so far. Experiences provide a person with first-hand knowledge that can guide one’s decision-making far more effectively than anecdotes about another person’s journey ever could.