What Andrew enjoys most about design is solving an organization’s problems and aiding the consumer’s needs. He's passionate, innovative, and has a team-first mindset geared towards building seamless and instinctive solutions for every product.
Andrew's life has revolved around sports, specifically hockey. He started skating and playing hockey at the age of two and because of hockey, baseball, and golf, his creative interests took a back seat. When Andrew started high school, there were numerous elective tracks: engineering, choir, business, journalism, language, art and design. Without hesitation, he chose art and design. Things were going well for him both in school and with hockey and baseball, even though he had suffered a handful of concussions, and numerous other major injuries.
Then IT happened. September 24, 2015, at captain's practice for hockey, Andrew suffered a career ending concussion. He missed 18 days of school and was in brain therapy for 8 weeks. This was an extremely dark and difficult time in his life. To cope with the hardships that came with rehab, he started drawing again. A few weeks into brain therapy, Andrew made the incredibly emotional decision to be done playing the game he loved. As his brain function started to return, he began scanning drawings to his computer, and this is when his passion for graphic design was born. Andrew felt the passion for design like he felt the passion for hockey. Weeks later as rehab ended, the hockey coach asked him to join the team as a student manager, allowing Andrew to stay connected to the team and the game, even though he couldn't play. This was when Andrew realized he could still have a future in sports, even though his playing career had ended.
After Andrew was cleared to return to school full-time in December 2015, he was finishing up Graphic Design I, where he learned the basics of Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. Fast-forward to September 2016, the Ryder Cup was being hosted at Hazeltine National Golf Club in Chaska, Minnesota, where he had been a caddie for a handful of years. In the merchandise tent, there were Ryder Cup themed hockey jerseys for sale, and it was through these that Andrew's career path began to formulate in his mind. Since, Andrew has searched for a way to have a career that combines his greatest passions in life; art, golf, and hockey.
It wasn’t until Andrew was admitted and enrolled at the University of Kansas’ School of Architecture and Design and joined the hockey club his freshman year that he realized how many possibilities there were for careers that combined design and sports. From August 2018 to May 2022, Andrew filled a lot of roles with this club as statistician, photographer, videographer, digital media and merchandise designer, treasurer, president, and even interim coach at times throughout his senior season. The work Andrew did, both creative and managerial, with the hockey club inspired him to remain close to sports through design and dreams of leading a creative department for a sports organization or designing jerseys for the Stadium Series, Winter Classic, and USA Hockey.
