Paul Woods

Paul Woods is an art director working at Huge, New York.

Prior to that he worked as design director at Edenspiekermann, Berlin. His work has won several awards and is regularly featured in international publications and blogs. Outside of his agency work, Paul likes to draw mildly offensive pictures of himself (often in the nude), design hand-lettered fonts and write design commentary for various publications. He hates text that is written in the third person.

10 questions for Paul Woods:

• What did you do before becoming a designer?

  When I finished high school I decided that I wanted to be an artist, so I went to art school and studied fine art. After about 2 years I realised I hated everything about fine art and decided to try and be a rock star instead. To keep myself alive while I toured, I somehow managed to talk my way into a job as a web designer at a record company (after convincing them that my fine art qualification of painting pictures meant I knew how to build websites). To be fair, I still find myself having a very illustrative approach to my work.

• Where do you turn for inspiration?

  Everywhere — the usual online resource, books, galleries, life. Actually, I find myself increasingly turning away from the internet for inspiration to avoid work becoming derivative of what’s already out there.

• Which are your favorite studios, designers or agencies?

  Sagmeister & Walsh, The Stone Twins, Wolff Olins and Steven Appleby.

• Is your city a good place for designers?

  Yes! Note the exclamation mark. I only just moved to New York in January of this year and it is an amazing place to be inspired. Before that I lived in Berlin for 4 years, a very different type of city, but equally inspiring to be a designer.

• Which technologies are you excited about in 2015?

  More than any specific technology, I’m more interested in the shifting roles of designers becoming developers, and vice versa. We live in an interesting time for designers, and I think that being able to code is now a must for any digital designer.

• Do you listen to music while you work? Describe your playlist.

  Always. Currently I have New Found Glory’s entire discography on repeat.

• What are you cultural influences? (Music, books, films, ideologies, etc.)

  As my background is very illustrative, I’m really into anything visual — for example I read a LOT of comics. I’m a bit of non-cultured Westerner when it comes to film — Hollywood blockbusters all the way (Jurassic Park is my all time favourite). My taste in books is also pretty abysmal — Dan Brown and JK Rowling are probably my number one authors. Terribly un-cultured (and un-hip), especially for Brooklyn.

• Have you got an academic background or are you self taught?

  Both. I was was entirely self taught for 3 years at my first job at a record company (learning design and development on the job). After a few years there I decided to go back to college to study design ‘officially’.

• What do you do in your free time?

  Aside from personal projects and writing, walking my dog is my number 1 thing. My girlfriend and I are in the process of buying a new Basset Hound puppy, so I can see a lot of hours being invested in the lovely business of toilet training in the coming months.

• Where do you see the industry in 5 years?

  Somewhere awesome. Designers playing a very different role than they do now. Designers being developers and developers being designers.

• Are you working on any personal projects?

  Yes. I’m currently working on a book called “How to do great work without being a wanker”. I feel very strongly about good agency culture (I’ve been very lucky in my career to work in great places), sustainable work practice and in general not being an arsehole to people you work with. Being nice goes a long way. I’m also working on a couple of personal illustration projects. I recently that I only take on freelance work that I would do for free. Which means only projects I really love.

• If you could give one piece of advice to newbie designers, what would it be?

  In the wise words of Anthony Burrill, “Work hard and be nice to be people”. Despite the industry stereotypes of egos and narcissism, it’s amazing how far you can get if you simply are not an arsehole to people.