RAW Magazine Issue 1:
Chuck Anderson and Benjamin Edgar
http://thebrilliance.com
Q: Where do you live?
Chuck: Chicago, in the Ravenswood neighborhood.
Ben: Just moved to Chicago...Gold Coast area. But I'd say I primarily live on the internet.
Q: What brought you into web design?
Chuck: I don't consider myself a web designer by any means, although I've had to learn and do some over the years, and I'm certainly not a developer by any means. I'm a visual artist - my own site, NoPattern.com, is built on Squarespace and even figuring out all the custom code I needed to get what I wanted was a pretty daunting task for me, ha. I could build you a pretty OK website using TextEdit and some memorized HTML though right now.
Ben: I suppose a transition from tinkering around in QBASIC at like age 13-14...then the web hitting and simply being able to take what was on my computer and make it available to the world. At first it kind of felt like a weird form a graffiti to have your own website... Eventually it became about using the internet to solve really large problems.
Q: Who are/were your idols at this time?
Chuck: I really don't have any idols to be honest, but in the spirit of answering the question there are of course a lot of artists and people I admire. At the moment I'm very interested by the work of designers David Rudnick, Hassan Rahim, Braulio Amado, and Michael Renaud. One guy more specifically on the web I've always enjoyed is Daniel Eatock. I don't use it but I have always loved his Indexhibit platform. Perfectly minimal.
Ben: Not really "idol" guy either...but I love to follow super visionary people like Steve Jobs and Elon...I really enjoy watching Karl Lagerfeld interviews as well.
Q: What does your typical day look like?
Chuck: First things first, I take my dog out every single morning for about half an hour. Rain, shine, snow, doesn't matter. I get out in the park and play with her. After that, I have my own design practice, NoPattern, so that takes up a good bit of my time with work for all different kinds of clients. Magazines, ad agencies, brands, sports teams, etc. But I'm also the Design Director at Havas Annex, an ad agency here in Chicago. So my schedule generally revolves around what I have going on there right now. At the end of the day I'm usually hanging out with my wife and dog. No two days are exactly alike but there's enough consistency to keep me sane.
Ben: Hmmm...don't really have a typical day. I just moved to Chicago, so still kind of sorting that out. And I have like 8 "jobs" none of which are full time. I keep a very organized calendar - or at least it feels organized to me, so that kind of determines my day up to maybe like 6-7pm. Its a mix between Wakestream Ventures, Boxed Water, th-oughts, my own line of objects, and whatever other random emails come up during the day, ha. Then its dinner time...I love dining out - I'm not a foodie...but I'm obsessed with restaurants and bars.
Q: What kind of music are you listening to during work?
Chuck: I'm all over the place. The name 'NoPattern' probably applies to my taste in music more than anything else, ha. I think the last 5 songs I added in Spotify were by George Harrison, Kamasi Washington, Turnstile, Kate Bush, and Playboi Carti. Ha, so like -- could be old classics, could be hip-hop, could be hardcore, could be jazz. Depends on the season, time of day, and what I'm working on.
Ben: For work lately...its been classical for the most part, though, I need to expand that collection a bit. Anything with lyrics, except Jay-Z, is tough for me to listen to while I work. Though...when I'm in illustrator, I like to listen to podcasts. Anything space or tech related related.
Q: What tools are you using when designing/developing?
Chuck: I generally work on either a MacBook Pro or my iMac. I probably split my time like 60% Photoshop, 30% Illustrator, 10% Lightroom. And I always use a Wacom tablet for literally everything. I feel like I almost can't work without one. And of course my phone - as a creative tool I use the camera and VSCO a ton.
Ben: iPhone!!! Ha...do so much work off that thing. Of course a MacBook with rotating use of photoshop and illustrator...
Q: What does your work-process look like?
Chuck: Hmm. Hard to answer, no two projects are exactly alike. Depends if its a personal project, for the agency I work for, or my own client. Just all over the place!
Ben: It's entirely about solving problems...so the process is defined by the vector from the problem to the solution.
Q: Your best piece of work?
Chuck: I don't know what my best piece of work is, but what I'm probably most proud of recently is what I've done with the Chicago Bulls in recent years, helping them with their social media and running/producing their Instagram photography takeover programs with different creatives in Chicago. They've been a client of mine for the last 3 years and I love working with them. Kind of a childhood dream come true, so that's what really comes to mind right now.
Ben: I love Boxed Water...its insane to me how far reaching it is now. Very proud to be a founder and team member there. The work that most sums me up is the marble hanger I did.
Q: Your worst piece of work?
Chuck: All the stuff I've done for money over the years that I wouldn't ever put in my portfolio. Ha.
Ben: Hmmm...the stuff where I didn't trust my intuition and thought I had to do it the way the "industry" does it.
Q: Why do you have a Brutalist Website?
Chuck: THE BRILLIANCE! was created 12 years ago back in 2005. We were very intrigued by "anti-design" on the web at a time when so many people were using Flash and very clunky UI. Sites like Drudge Report and a streetwear webstore at the time called Conceptshop that sold A Bathing Ape and other similar brands were very "information-first", and we really gravitated to that. It seemed smart. THE BRILLIANCE! was for us first and foremost a content site with creative writing, so we felt it important to let that shine and not have design get in the way. We actually never thought of it as a brutalist website actually, that term wasn't even part of the zeitgeist in 2005! Ha.
Ben: I think there was a weird kind of subversive sense of humor in the design at the time...its now maybe more ironic, but at the time it was a bit "punk" rock as pixel fonts and flash we're more the "designed" way to do things. I love that it still holds up...
Q: Who designed the website?
Chuck: Benjamin Edgar (Benjamin Edgar, Boxed Water) and myself (NoPattern Studio), two longtime friends, designed the site together.
Q: Who coded the website?
Ben: I actually did the original one using classic ASP with a (OMG) Microsoft Access as the database platform. Seriously hilarious to anyone who is/was a coder. It was an entirely custom design and customer CMS built from the ground up. Over the past 6-7 years we've used our close friend Dennis Eusibio of Thought&Theory to help us out. At one point it lived entirely on a heavily modified WordPress CMS, but the backend process was way too cumbersome to make posts...so for this iteration we built it from the ground up, yet again, but in Rails. Thank you to Dennis a million times.
Q: With what kind of editor?
Ben: Again, completely built from the ground up. We know its a way, way overkill to do something like that - but we spent a bunch of time making it as easy as possible to make a post. There is, truly, nothing unneeded in the posting process...easier said than done. We also built a super smart image cropper solution so that regardless of image size/proportion or if it was uploaded form mobile or desktop it looks the same to the end user.
Chuck: Ditto to everything Ben said...and just to tack one last thing on, we believe the environment in which you create is really important, and although we could type out our posts in any text editor and paste it in, it just feels 'right' to craft a post within the aesthetic of The Brilliance, within a UI that we control 100%.