CF: who is Andrew Kim? when did you know you wanted to become a product designer and which steps have you taken to make that happen?

Well, I’m a 19 years old, born in Seoul and raised in Vancouver; pretty generic I suppose. My life has always been about obsessions. When I was young, I went through periods of being obsessed about dinosaurs then cars. This trend naturally ended up with product design when I was in middle school. I knew that I wanted to become a product designer the second I played with the original iPod mini. It was the first time I realized the importance of the tolerances in material and attention to detail. I then decided to take this path as my career and ended up at CCS, an art school in Detroit. I ended up transferring to Art Center College for Design in California last year though.

“The perfect product design is something simple that does a lot. I am truly a believer that it’s harder to take away than to add…”

CF: where do you draw inspiration from? could you describe your thought process for us?

Every time I get asked this, I’m totally stumped. I too do not know of a single source of inspiration. If I did, my life would be a lot easier. I think I my inspiration comes randomly. I see or feel something, and I translate it into one of my projects. For example, my Google Vitamin project was from my anger at the horrible packaging I see whenever I pass a supplements store, and the HTC 1 is from my lack of satisfaction in the current mobile phone market. I suppose what I most often do is ask the question, “Why was something made like this?”. I usually answer with, “Well, I think it should be like this”.

CF: what makes for the perfect product design from your point of view?

The perfect product design is something simple that does a lot. I am truly a believer that it’s harder to take away than to add.

CF: if you could soundtrack your work, what would you choose?

Hmm… this is hard. I’m a The Doors kind of person, but I feel that my work is more suited to genres I’m not too familiar with.

“I hope I’ll be able to satisfy not only myself, but also the people who will eventually be using my products…”

CF: what is your favorite thing about living in Los Angeles?

Favorite thing? The weather!

CF: what are your plans for the future? where do you see yourself working and what sort of projects would you be interested in doing?

My plan for now is to graduate from school as fast as possible and design awesome products. It’s hard to say where I want to work right now, but I’ll follow where my passion takes me. For the longest time, I wanted to take a Dieter Rams approach to my design career. More recently, I’m increasingly interested in designers like Tokujin Yoshioka. Nevertheless, I hope I’ll be able to satisfy not only myself, but also the people who will eventually be using my products.