As a perfectionist in private and work life I commited myself and my designs to the highest standards. Thus, it is particularly important for me to unite the wishes of customers and users in order to create a product that comes with the best possible user experience and accompanies the customer in a promising way.

Official graduation

Digital & Print media designer
Subject Area: Design & Technology
Focus: Digital design & picture editing

Work experience

Web design & conception since 2008
Mobile/App design & conception since 2013
Digital illustration since 2014

Publications for

Henkel, Schwarzkopf, Nectra Color, Taft, syoss,
Set ONE by Musterring, Costa Meeresspezialitäten,
PETER-LACKE, EK Servicegroup, Volkswagen Group

mandy holz
Concept developer • UI designer • Corporate designer • Illustrator

App designer, web designer, mobile designer, graphic designer, media designer, illustrator, interactive designer, print designer, concept designer, perfectionist, music lover, animal lover, creative mind, digital mind, art director, UX designer, UI designer, pixel jockey, problem solver, disaster manager, tidiness lover, challenge lover, self-improver, self-educator,

I’ve been thinking a lot about what words could describe best who and how I am – professional and private. But I came to the conclusion that single words aren’t the right way to describe who I am and how I tend to manage my work and private life.

Creative

Goal-oriented

Detail-addicted

Self-taught

mandy holz
Concept developer • UI designer • Corporate designer • Illustrator

App designer, web designer, mobile designer, graphic designer, media designer, illustrator, interactive designer, print designer, concept designer, perfectionist, music lover, animal lover, creative mind, digital mind, art director, UX designer, UI designer, pixel jockey, problem solver, disaster manager, tidiness lover, challenge lover, self-improver, self-educator,

I’ve been thinking a lot about what words could describe best who and how I am – professional and private. But I came to the conclusion that single words aren’t the right way to describe who I am and how I tend to manage my work and private life.

  • Creative

  • Goal-oriented

  • Detail-addicted

  • Self-taught

So I’d like to try it with the words of Tim Minchin, an Australian comedian, actor, writer, musician and director, who said during a very inspirational graduation speech at the University of Western Australia: „(…) And in my opinion, until I change it, life is best filled by learning as much as you can about as much as you can. Taking pride in whatever you’re doing. Having compassion, sharing ideas, running, being enthusiastic.(…)“ I’m not exaggerating when I say that I’ve already watched this video for at least a hundred times.

Not just because the whole speech is truly inspiring and motivating, but because especially the first part of the quoted paragraph describes in a very appropriate way how I usually tend to manage my life: I believe that life is best filled by learning as much as you can about as much as you can and that the best way of learning all those things isn’t to go visit a uni or pass a professional education, but to just actively do them. And as I’ve decided to turn my biggest passion into my profession many years ago, I’m especially living these two beliefs out on my professional career.

So I’d like to try it with the words of Tim Minchin, an Australian comedian, actor, writer, musician and director, who said during a very inspirational graduation speech at the University of Western Australia: „(…) And in my opinion, until I change it, life is best filled by learning as much as you can about as much as you can. Taking pride in whatever you’re doing. Having compassion, sharing ideas, running, being enthusiastic.(…)“ I’m not exaggerating when I say that I’ve already watched this video for at least a hundred times. Not just because the whole speech is truly inspiring and motivating, but because especially the first part of the quoted paragraph describes in a very appropriate way how I usually tend to manage my life: I believe that life is best filled by learning as much as you can about as much as you can and that the best way of learning all those things isn’t to go visit a uni or pass a professional education, but to just actively do them. And as I’ve decided to turn my biggest passion into my profession many years ago, I’m especially living these two beliefs out on my professional career.

Pursuit of working beauty

what does that acutally mean to me?

During my past career I’ve seen myself facing a common saying in our business again and again, which says that ‚form follows function‘. Moreover, I’ve seen this saying causing big discussions about on what side concessions could be made to reach a better result on the other side for a bunch of times. And it actually always ended up in concessions on both sides – and in an application that didn’t get the chance to be as great as it could have been without all those concessions. So in general, the named saying might be completely true. Nevertheless, my experiences have told me that it also has to be taken with a pinch of salt. Let me tell you why: Of course, each digital application’s benefit is to provide cool or helpful stuff to users everywhere in the world, no matter if it’s a governmental website or a smartphone game, a VR based market guide or just a simple digital cookbook. So yes, the base of each application is and should always be the functionality and concessions on the programming will always be concessions on the project’s basic idea. But let’s have a look beyond our own noses and think about how all of our applications catch on with the people they are made for: the users.

The typical user doesn’t understand even a word of programming, UX design, user journeys or coding languages and he also doesn’t understand a word of design rules. Nevertheless, the design of each application is the first thing the user gets to see when opening it and, beyond that and remembering the fact that users don’t understand a word of programming, it’s the first and only possibility for the user to understand and, therefore, use the provided functions. Which means, that concessions on the design will always be concessions on the final user experience. So what do we have? We have concessions on the basic idea on one side and concessions on the user experience on the other side. Of course, both concessions have to be avoided to make a great application. Therefore, in my opinion, it is absolutely necessary that both parts – the form and the function – are taken as equal factors within the development of each application. Only if all needs of each part of the development are treated equally and get the focus they deserve and need the application really gets a chance to persist and to be great in doing so.

Tools I’m working with

Mandy Holz Design
41069 Mönchengladbach

Got interested?

Looking for a dependable new partner for your future projects? Then we should definitely meet each other! As a freelance artist I‘m always looking for exciting new challenges.