About me

June 2006–present
Self-employed, working on a range of design projects, generally information design: specifically book design, design for wayfinding, and user research.

What I relish most are projects requiring a mixture of creativity and analysis.

In 2019 I completed my PhD in the Department of Typography and Graphic Communication at the University of Reading, examining the relationship between design and behaviour.

Scope I undertake work that ranges from developing strategy and masterplanning, right through to detailed implementation.

Design software Expert with Adobe InDesign, capable in Illustrator, Photoshop, and Quark XPress. I am also very familiar with Microsoft Office suite. Additionally I’ve worked with SAP and XML. When particular projects require it, I learn about other softwares, technologies, and materials.

User research Skilled at conducting user research, employing a range of quantitative and qualitative approaches, depending on what best meet the project objectives. I have conducted research examining behaviour in the built environment, in printed documents, and on-screen. I am also skilled at mining published research to find behavioural evidence without investment in new research.

Awards In 2007 Boag Associates won a Design Effectiveness Award for their work on the T-Mobile bill design, a project that I had worked on while at Boag Associates.
England’s Thousand Best Churches won a ‘nibbie’ award as best illustrated book for 2002.
In the time that I was working full-time in publishing, four books that I designed won Book Design and Production Awards and fourteen books were selected for exhibition at the annual Book Design and Production Awards.

I am also a founder member of The Five Andrews. We aim to bring joy into the world through movement-based visual theatre. This is an integral part of my creative practice, even if at first glance it looks quite different to my design work shown here.

Employment pre-2006

March 2003–June 2006
Senior Designer and Project Manager for Boag Associates, design consultancy specialising in information design.

1991–February 2003
Designer, then Senior Designer, then Design Manager for Penguin Books.
While at Penguin I designed books that covered the full range of their output, from straightforward fiction to highly complex illustrated books, taking in cookery books of all shapes and sizes, poetry, Penguin Classics, dictionaries, and non-fiction.

1990–1991
Project Designer for Gaia Books.
Working on highly illustrated books about environmental issues.

1988–1990
Book Designer for Faber and Faber.

1987–1988
Designer for Chatto and Windus.

1983–1987
BA (hons) in Typography & Graphic Communication at the University of Reading.
Graduating 2:1.

To find out more please email me or phone +44 (0)7974 176656.

photo of Andrew Barker