Andy Mangold

As a young designer, my web presence is an important aspect of my personal branding, my best method of marketing myself, and a strong reflection of the designer I am, or want to be. Since I started putting my work online three years ago, this domain has had six different designs, only three of which I am not completely ashamed of (a good sign I am growing as a designer). Keeping to my unintentionally established six-month website life cycle, I will be redesigning my portfolio and blog for launch sometime in early 2010.

I have been spending the last couple months accumulating bookmarks of portfolio and blog designs that I find to be highly effective, compelling, or interesting for any reason, and I thought I would share my thoughts. These are some of the best websites out there in the portfolio/blogosphere, in my humble opinion.

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For my independent research project in my Folk Art and Folk Life class this semester, I am planning to research the story, design, materiality, and personality behind objects members of my generation hold significant or irreplaceable: a study of the Heirloom. I hope to interview anyone and everyone I can in MY generation who has an object they consider irreplaceable and document my findings in a book I will edit, design, and bind by the end of the semester.

This is where you come in. If you are under the age of 26, have an object that you consider unique, irreplaceable, or significant for ANY reason, and (preferably) are located in the Baltimore, MD or West Chester, PA area, please consider letting me interview you for this project; it would be a huge, huge help. If you are interested, or have any questions, post a comment below, shoot me an email, give me a call, or otherwise get in touch with me.

I will be sure to provide status updates as the project moves along!

I bought myself some new shoes this past week, something I haven’t done in a long time. After extensive research, I decided on going with some old school, Bob Cousy PF Flyers. I am exceptionally happy with my purchase; I think the shoes fit my personality and design sensibilities. But that is not what’s got me thinking this evening.

What’s got me thinking is just how different the retail market, and the whole process of buying something, is today. Thanks to the internet, I can, and did, shop around to dozens of different sites, looking at hundreds of different shoes, reading reviews and specs, and finding the lowest price. This is a luxury generations before ours did not have.

This is certainly not a new realization; however I did something tonight that made me think. I, a 21 year old, grown-ass-man Googled “how to lace up and tie your shoes”. Why you ask? Because I wanted to t figure out the absolute best way to lace up and tie my new shoes, which I spent so much time and energy picking out. And, of course, I found exactly what I was looking for, a nice man named Ian who seems to know everything there is to know about lacing up and tying one’s shoes. Basically, the internet allows me to appease my perfectionist tendencies, allows me to do almost anything, no matter how simple, in the best way imaginable.

I am interested to get you people’s thoughts on this. Is this kind of diversification of information, including the mundane, allow each of us to uniquely pick our path through this world from the countless choices before us? Or, is this kind of obsessive perfection a detrimental waste of time to society, suffocation original ideas? Let me know what you 400 anonymous subscribers think!

Ian on How To Lace Up Your Shoes (I decided to go with the Over-Under)
Ian on How to Tie Your Shoes (Secure Shoelace Knot for me!)