Andrew Herzog has worked in a variety of creative roles across the advertising, tech, and design industries. Before founding School he was a co-founder of the design studio HAWRAF. Prior to that, he led projects at the Google Creative Lab dealing with artificial intelligence, creative tools, and accessibility, and before that, spent time at Sagmeister & Walsh and R/GA. He received his masters degree from the Savannah College of Art and Design and has taught Undergraduate Thesis at the School of Visual Arts and Parsons School of Design | The New School in New York City since 2016.
Nicky Tesla has a background in creative development and design. Prior to founding School he was a co-founder of HAWRAF, and before that spent time working at COLLINS and Google’s Creative Lab as a creative technologist. He graduated from Northwestern University with a B.S. in Systems Engineering.
School was formed in 2019 and is founded and directed by two partners—one with an engineering background and the other with a design background. At its core, the studio is a vehicle for us to harmonize and build, across and through disciplines, to create work with a unique, well-rounded, and progressive outlook.
What distinguishes us from more traditional design studios is our ability to find beauty through the cross product of aesthetics and reason. We believe that this gestalt approach results in work that is of a sounder quality and which is more memorable, more comprehensible and ultimately more impactful to its end user.
We also celebrate and aspire towards a medium and subject agnostic portfolio and work stream. We’ve found that working across disciplines encourages a cross pollination of fresh ideas that often sprout surprising, and genuinely novel features. It makes the work more interesting and keeps us interested.
We bring thoughtful perspectives to conceptual, practical, and visual problems. Sometimes the problems are broad and require our full range of competencies. Sometimes they’re focused and require us to dig deep in one direction. Either way, within the studio we are capable of taking a project from research to idea to design to production. While we prefer to utilize our full range of capabilities we also work on projects that necessitate a narrower scope.
Ideas
We like imagining what could be. During ideation sprints we spend time working with clients to understand their intent and workshop both tactical and far out solutions that help get them there.
Development
Whether we’ve designed it or not, we can bring almost anything to life. If you're looking for a micro-site, mobile app, palatial e-commerce platform, interactive installation, or experimental prototype, we can build it. We’ll architect a foundation that can be handed off to continue growing or construct a solid, functional one-off system.
Research
Research can be a great starting point, or even the entirety of a scope of work. After determining the area of interest, we’ll develop a research approach to survey the landscape and distill our findings into an informational artifact.
Design
We establish and architect design solutions that balance form and function. Our aesthetic is shaped by what we’re trying to accomplish. The solutions come in the form of identity systems, interfaces, interactions and communications. Sometimes a proposed solution might envelop all four areas of design.
Production
To produce big ideas, campaigns, film shoots and printed matter we partner and direct experts to help us bring that work to life. We have a network of trusted friends and peers who are at the top of their craft and continually exceed our expectations through collaboration.
We're not currently hiring but keep an eye on our Instagram and check back here for updates.
Mailchimp, Zadig & Voltaire, Google, Facebook, The New Yorker, Mozilla, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Haus, Amplify Education, MTV, Samsung, New MUSEUM, Entireworld, BAGGU, Warby Parker, Jack Daniels, SHARP, Urban-X, Bitforms Gallery, Android, Fast Company