Q: Where do you live?

Sandy Spink: I was living in London, England for a couple years, just to see how that felt and also to get the opportunity to travel around Europe be able to go back to Canada and tell people I was “worldly” and also to improve the ol’ CV by working at a big ol’ corporation. I moved back to British Columbia at the end of December but I’m moving to Toronto in January. I like to move around.

Q: What brought you into web design?

Sandy Spink: When I was a little kid I taught myself to do stop and flash animation, and I did some graphic design and even made some video games. Later, while I was in design school, I started to realise that websites synthesized all of these things and so I steered my interest train in that direction and I’ve been really enjoying the ride. Like nothing else, web design and development excites me because I still don’t think we’ve come close to “maturity” on the web and so there are still lots of things that haven’t been done yet, which is really cool to like have an opportunity to pioneer something and maybe even influence people or just shock them or make them laugh or have any other reactions.

Q: Who are/were your idols at this time?

Sandy Spink: I don’t really have any idols. And I don’t mean to say that to be like “fuck idols I know exactly what I want to make and how I want to be and I don’t need nobody telling me how to design my lifey.” It’s more just that things change so quickly and so do my tastes, so holding onto idols becomes very tricky. I end up having to break up with a lot of them.

Q: What does your typical day look like?

Sandy Spink: Most days start with coffee, followed by reading things on my computer while drinking that coffee. Once I’ve charged my brain up with some interesting creative energy from looking at other people’s good ideas, I expel most of that energy by drowning myself in emails and Slack messages (currently I’m working remotely for a company based in London). Then I try to focus on finishing the work-that-pays-the-bills projects I have on the go. Once those are done I usually spend my evenings working on the more personal projects that don’t pay the bills, such as badnudes.com

Q: What kind of music are you listening to during work?

Sandy Spink: I think that having the right music playing while working is reeeaaaallllyyyy important and this often leads to decreased productivity as I find myself searching for the right tunes to fit the mood/project I’m working on. But in the end I think it’s totally worth it because I do my best work when I feel like the project, my thought process, and the music I am listening to are just fitting together perfectly.

Currently I’m listening to Pinegrove, Kaytranada, SZA, Ruthven, Jai Paul, Franc Moody, Tennis, Car Seat Headrest and a lot of Colemine Records releases.

Q: What tools are you using when designing/developing?

Sandy Spink: It depends what I’m working on, but at work I use Sketch ⟿ Principle ⟿ Webflow and then I pass that work on to the developers to bring to life. Then I give feedback on it once they have something to show. For personal projects I usually start right in Webflow once I have an idea, often scrapping and rebuilding projects entirely as I go because you can just develop so quickly in Webflow. Then I’ll move from Webflow and do some final touches in the HTML/CSS/JS which I may not have been able to do or test in Webflow. But I have to do this less and less as Webflow is growing more powerful by the day!!! (P.S. Shout out to Webflow I love you Webflow ❤)

Q: Why do you have a Brutalist Website?

Sandy Spink: When we began discussing the look and feel of the website, the editors made it very clear that they wanted a simple space where people could just "read and have a good time". We also liked the idea of having all of the content on a single page so people could load the website once and have all of the content. I proposed the idea of building a brutalist website because it would allow us to have a simple aesthetic that would not distract from the main focus of the website (the text), and be visually distinct from other online magazines. Also the lightweight nature of our brutalist website would allow for all of the content to be loaded at once while maintaining acceptable load times.

Q: Who designed the website?

Sandy Spink: I designed the website.


Q: Who coded the website?

Sandy Spink: I coded the website.


Q: With what kind of editor?

Sandy Spink: I used Webflow and Sublime text to build the website.

A lot of designers start on paper but I’ve always been better at expressing my ideas with computers.
–Sandy Spink