Andre Andreev & Dan Covert

Graphic Designers

How would describe graphic design?

Dan: Graphic design is kind of communication. Helping someone communicate what they need. And problem solving. Those are the two biggest things.

Andre: It’s usually visual communication. I think that’s another way of saying graphic design.

Did you think this could be career – were there influences?

A: Me, personally, I grew up around it. My dad was a graphic designer and art director and at the time, graphic design was done by hand and it was very much like collage I guess. So for me growing up, I literally saw him cut up photos and cut up text and develop photos in our basement. I thought hey you know I could probably do that too – it’s not that hard.

D: I had no idea what graphic design was growing up until I was probably in late high school, early college before I really, really figured out that this was a career. I mean I noticed things were visual like t-shirts and album covers and stuff but I never realized that somebody actually made those until I got more trained and people told me that there’s an actual career and you could actually make a living of it.

Can you talk about the process of getting to arts school?

A: Before even getting into high school I knew I wanted to be a graphic designer…a designer in some sort of way. I learned a lot of the software in community colleges and started doing some of the stuff on my own for bands, for friends, started doing website, started doing a little bit of 3-D animation, kind of got my feet wet with all that. I had known nothing about art schools and what colleges to go to, etc. And I thought oh yea I should check that b/c in my area, in Washington State, there really isn’t a good art school to go to. I ended up visiting California College of the Arts and I just fell in love with the campus and that was it for me.

D: So in high school I really had no idea what I wanted to do when I went to college. I went to school in Ohio for two years at OSU. I started out in engineering because my father was an engineer and that’s what he was trained in and he was doing quite well for himself. But I really started to get into this graphic design thing and realized it was something I wanted to do as a career but I couldn’t really do it at the school that I loved and I was surrounded by my friends and I wanted to be there. So I kind of made a decision to break off and go do my own thing. Applied to arts school and got accepted to the same school as Andre – California College of the Arts.

What type of challenges were at school? Academics vs. what you wanted to do?

D: It’s such a small world in school and there’s not that many jobs in graphic design – well the jobs that we want which are the really good jobs like the 5% of the field you know what I mean. So you gotta do really well to get these position and to prove that you’re really committed to this career or else you’ll end up designing the back of phonebooks or credit cards or this stuff that we don’t really enjoy. So we were always like, we’re in this good school, it costs a fair amount of money, we’re surrounded by some of the best people in the industry – why not bust our butts.

How did you end up beating the competition?

D: Knowing what you want and kind of going after that. We’ve both been really clear from the beginning – we want to do stuff related to music, we want to do stuff related to culture, kind of this youth culture thing – that’s what we’re in love with. So its making this list of like 5 or 10 people – I want to work there and I’m going to work there. And then figuring how to make it happen. Rather than graduating and just expecting someone to give you your dream job which is just not going to happen. We both kind of figured out where we want to go and figure out how to get there.

Can you talk about the path after college – getting a job, going through several jobs?

D: I had got this opportunity through school from again, working hard and doing well, recognized by the school they had flown me out to NY for this kind of art directors portfolio show which is kind of supposedly the best design students in the country. And saw that MTV was going to be there and I hadn’t really thought that graphic designers could work there , but as soon as I saw that I knew that this was my dream job. I want that job. So I sent them stuff ahead of time and showed them that I was going to be there and kind of started this relationship and then 6 months later I got in the door. You say hello and that starts the relationship, you keep sending them work and then all of a sudden a position opens up and then you slide right it because you’re the best portfolio or you’re the most personable. You’ve created a connection.

Talk about working at MTV, corporation vs. running your own business, talk about Dresscode…

D: Its kind of like from the beginning its been fueled by stuff that we love – music, fashion, art…these are areas that we want to operate in. And for the most part, in the beginning, those are not where you can make a lot of money. So it was kind of by night we would work on these side projects that we loved and by day, we would go to MTV which is another job that we love but it’s a way more corporate job where you’re working with bosses of bosses of bosses and tons of approval processes and people coming in with ideas and articulate in that environment. But then at night and we would run our own show and pretty much do whatever we wanted. So its pretty much like the yin and the yang of both situations. One’s a very corporate environment where you deal with more political stuff and we come home where its like just me and him talking about an idea, presenting an idea.

What do you think it takes to be successful – certain qualities, skills…

D: I mean obviously it’s a very, very visual career and you have to have some idea of aesthetics, or composition and all these things of art background come into it. But form for form’s sake doesn’t hold up too well…I mean there has to an idea that drives it and both of us are conceptual thinkers where we kind of solve the problem and the form helps you articulate that problem and it gives the audience a more visceral experience. So you definitely have to have a rational thought process.

A: Or not. You can be just really spontaneous and be crazy. I think that’s the difference between me and Dan – he’s very rational and I feel like I’m a little more spontaneous in the way that I work. And that totally bites me sometimes because I’ll turn around and be like check this out and he’ll be like dude, that’s not really good at all. And I’ll be like dude, that’s fire, it’s awesome. And I think that’s the other really good thing about working together. I think idea are the biggest commodity in this business - ideas.

For students today, who may want to be graphic designers, what advice do you have? How do you get experience, etc?

A: That’s a hard one because we can give you a very generic answer like work hard or stay in school which are obviously true but you just have to be persistent at what you want to do. I think that’s the biggest thing – being persistent and being passionate. Because even if you’re a mediocre designer or skilled craftsmen or whatever…not all of us are born designers or artists…you have to work on it its like a skill you have to work on it.

D: And that’s one of the part of our careers there’s not one entry point. Its not like I want to be a doctor, I’m going to medical school. We know so many designers who didn’t go to school for graphic design who went to school for film. Or friends who went to school for graphic design and now do film. There’s so many ways to kind of go into this profession and practice this profession. It’s fun. Everyday is a new day.

That’s basically it but I want to get you to talk about coming to this country and learning English?

A: So when I came to the country I migrated with my mom and I moved to Seattle. Coming out of Bulgaria it was hard because I didn’t know too many Bulgarian kids, other Bulgarian kids in the school and no one could really speak it and it just ended up falling into place. Of course by the time I got to college, it was pretty smooth transition. But even now, I feel like that this is as good as its gonna get, I know I have an accent.