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Andrew Alford (Andrew Alford Creative): Living Your Most Colorful Life

Andrew Alford is best described as a creative human, artist, and interior designer fighting a war against beige and boring. With more than twenty years of experience in the interior design and creative concept industries, Andrew has designed for some of the world’s most progressive hotel brands. Alford’s work has been featured in The New York Times, Newsweek, Hotels Magazine, Boutique Design Magazine, and Green Interiors Magazine.

In this episode, he lets us into his thoughts and shares the career advice that you never knew you needed and how to live your most colorful life. From the very moment we connected to the end of our conversation, Andrew entertains.

Topics discussed in this episode:

Color
Design Methodology
Creative Thinking
Career Development

Quotes from Andrew Alford:

“No one ever looked at a sunset and said ‘I wish it were more beige.’"
“You have to look at where your inspiration comes from, and you’ve got to find your own point of view that is uniquely yours.”
“When someone steps into one of my interiors, I want them to leave the outside world behind.”
“A lot of times, the sources of our anxiety are artificial cages that we’ve put ourselves in.”
“I encourage young designers to build the room in their head first before putting pen to paper or going to the fabric library.”

More About Andrew Alford:

Andrew Alford began his hospitality design career as the Style Manager for Kimpton Hotels and Restaurants. Alford’s background and early apprentice years were spent learning with some of the top interior designers in the field including a start with Thomas Jayne Studio as a receptionist, which led him to a junior design position with David Kleinberg Design Associates. While working at DKDA, Alford enrolled in design classes at Parsons the New School of Design. After his tenure with Kimpton, he launched his own firm, Dirty Lines Design in 2007.

Clients included Joie de Vivre Hospitality, Kimpton Hotels and Restaurants, W Hotels, Societe Hospitality, Waterford Hotels among others. Projects ranged from luxury resorts to eccentric neighborhood hotels to dive bars on the Pacific Coast Highway. Most notably, Alford designed Hotel Lincoln and the J. Parker roof bar in Chicago.