i met rob through coming in contact with bitmap, a most excellent co-working outfit here in williamsburg, brooklyn, less than a block from our studio. rob operates barnickel design, and his design awesomeness really shines forth in his design product arm, 200pt. following are rob’s responses to the interview questions;

dailey: what does your workspace look like? (send a picture please)

dailey: what’s you desktop wallpaper right now?

dailey: what prompted you to pursue graphic design?
barnickel: I entered into college as an English major with an Art minor, that soon reversed until I eventually dropped the English minor altogether. It wasn’t until my second year that I became interested in Graphic Design after taking a class and realizing the potential for the computer in art—I was excited about the unknown places that the computer could take art after taking lots of art history classes and feeling like everything had already been done.

dailey: what kind of things do you do to ensure that you continue to grow as a graphic designer and improve/expand your skill set?
barnickel: Man! You’ve got to keep your eyes open.. Living in Brooklyn helps a lot, it’s hard to live here for more than a couple years and not be exposed to a ton of great art and design. Keeping an active Tumblr and Facebook page for my studio has helped a ton as well, because it forces me to search for things that inspire me and then archive them. Going to AIGA events that interest me helps a lot—we just saw Angus Hyland speak about his new book on logo design and it was amazing, but I’d say community in general is great for inspiration.. just hanging around people that inspire you.

dailey: what’s one lesson that you’ve had to learn the hard way as a designer? how would you do it differently the next time?
barnickel: ALWAYS HAVE A CONTRACT & NEVER WORK FOR FREE. If I had to do it all over again I would have learned more about the business side of design, but I didn’t learn how to deal with clients properly until I went out on my own officially (as opposed to working for a company). Cameron Foote has written an amazing book called “The Business Side of Creativity” that every design school should teach an entire class on.

dailey: when you’re not designing, what are you doing?
barnickel: Life IS design Dailey.. Life IS design.. just kidding.. When I’m not designing I am trying to not think about design at all and hanging with family and friends. Also I like to be outside as much as possible either walking or riding bikes around Brooklyn.

dailey: being creative and creating; what steps do you take to make sure that you are actually producing instead of just thinking up pie-in-sky ideas all day?
barnickel: This whole Behance, 99%, “Making Ideas Happen” movement is very inspiring. I doodle in my Moleskine less these days and spend more time organizing client projects, bookkeeping, etc. Also when someone has paid good money for something it’s an incredible motivator for doing great work for them (another good reason for never working for free).

dailey: who are your top three design heroes and why?
barnickel: Wayne White, because he’s an artist first and a typographer/designer second, he’s an inspiring sort of guy when you read about his life.. he just stuck to his guns and always did what he loved. 
Bjarke Ingels because he is so bold in doing what he believes in and has the guts to present ideas that seem very idealistic and crazy at first, but then he actually pulls them off. 
Just about every designer / artist who was part of the Bauhaus movement because they believed that good art / design could actually change the world.

dailey: what is your greatest fear (pertaining to design)? what haunts your dreams?
barnickel: My greatest design fear is that I will completely disappoint my clients and that they will sue me or something awful like that.. pretty irrational fear I suppose. I also am pretty scared of being stuck in an awful job that I have created for myself, which luckily hasn’t happened yet, but is something that can happen if you start taking on a lot of projects you don’t care about for people who don’t care about you.

dailey: what, in your opinion, is the highest possible function that design can have?
barnickel: In my opinion the highest function that design can have is to serve society in a way that is functional and beautiful.