Mandy Brown

How did you get connected with Zeldman and crew at A List Apart?

I hired Happy Cog for a project at Norton. So I met Zeldman, Jason, Erin Kissane, and Liz Danzico, and we all worked on it together. It was a really good collaboration and we became friends. I tried to be a good client.

I started pushing Jeffrey about A Book Apart because there had been a “coming soon” banner on the A List Apart website for two years, maybe longer, but it clearly wasn’t coming very quickly. I loved the idea of short books about the web. I wanted to read those books, so I kept pushing him about doing it, mostly selfishly because I was excited about the prospect of them. After a while, it became clear that I could fill a role in the publishing house itself.

Very cool. Where did you attend college?

I studied at William & Mary. I have a Bachelors in Physics, but I was a double major with English, so I did all of the degree requirements for both English and Physics. W & M only grants a degree for one major so I could have graduated with either a B.A. in English or a B.S. in Physics. I thought a B.S. in Physics sounded more badass.

Yeah, it does. Where were you born?

I was born in Okinawa, to a military family. We were stationed in Japan at the time, but my father was later transferred to Quantico in Northern Virginia. He left active duty when I was pretty young so we stayed in Virginia and I grew up there in the suburbs outside of DC. I didn’t have a typical military upbringing where we moved around a lot.

Was creativity a part of your childhood?

I’m going to push back a little on that question because I think all kinds of people are creative. I don’t think there’s a special creative type. So, unless you had a really miserable upbringing, I can’t imagine anyone who experienced childhood who wasn’t creative.

So, yes, I did have a creative childhood. But I was not and I’m still not a visually creative person. My creativity has always been around words.

Was there an “aha” moment for you when you knew what you wanted to do?

I still don’t know what I want to do. I still haven’t decided. That’s probably why I do a lot of different things. I couldn’t pick one major in college and I apparently can’t pick one career. I’ve always had a renaissance approach to doing things. I want to be experienced in a lot of different things and be good at as many as possible. I think it’s clear at this point that whatever I’m doing is going to be close to the text. But beyond that, it’s wide open.

Ryan: Weren’t you tweeting about that several weeks ago – about what you want to be when you grow up?

Yes, I had this brief moment where I was thinking about my birthday and feeling old and wondering at what point you have to figure out what you’re doing. Usually there’s a tipping point where you run out of time. But the responses I got from people were that nobody decides anymore. Or, if you do decide, you decide serially. You decide for this decade, and then 10 years from now, you decide something else. You get to be a lot of different things. I think it’s really exciting that you can always learn something new.

Did you or do you have a mentor? Who was it and how did they inspire you?

I have not. It’s hard to mentor someone who doesn’t commit to any one thing, so I don’t think I’ve made myself available to that. Throughout my career, I’ve been strident about doing things my own particular way, and I generally have problems with authority. So, I haven’t really been one to invite a mentor in.

Now, I’m trying to be a mentor to people who are younger, but I’ve still never had a mentor myself. I almost think that when you get older, you need it more. Things become more complicated, decisions are bigger, the consequences are different.

What advice would you give to someone who’s young and fresh and starting out with ambition?

I find this a difficult question because I’ve had such an eclectic path through my career, it’s hard for me to generalize my experience. The best advice I can give is to practice a lot and not let anybody get in your way. Do as much as you can and if it sucks, that’s okay. Keep doing it if it’s something you really want to do. It’s going to suck for a long time, but eventually that will change. Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t do whatever it is you want to do.

A lot of people told me I couldn’t do two degrees in four years, especially with such different subjects. If it can’t be done I have to figure out how to do it. I have that streak in me—not always to my benefit, but I acknowledge that it’s there.

Are the people in your life supportive of what you do?

My friends are hugely supportive. My husband, Keith, is a filmmaker and he’s always believed in me, always pushed me to do better. He’s a huge part of where I am today. I’m also part of Studiomates, which is the most supportive and amazing environment you could possibly imagine. It’s the kind of place where you say you have a crazy idea and instead of people saying it’s insane, they say, “I can totally help you do that. Let’s start tomorrow.” Being around people in the web community, there’s this general feeling that anything is possible if you sit down and put enough thought into it. It’s amazing how many great ideas are out there and how encouraging everybody is.

What does a typical day look like for you?

I get up really early in the summer because I rise with the sun. This time of year it’s closer to 7am, 7:15am, 7:30am—depending on how many times I hit the snooze button. I usually go to the gym first thing, come home, make breakfast, have coffee, attend to email or stuff that’s cluttering up. Most days I head into the studio around 11am or so. We have daily calls with the Typekit team at 1pm Eastern, and I try to get some stuff done before that call. Early afternoon hours are spent talking with Typekit folks. Then I focus on the important stuff for the rest of the day until 7 or 8pm. I’ll cook dinner or Keith and I will go out depending on how busy we are. Then I’ll do another hour or two of work in the evening. If I’m caught up on work, I’ll read for an hour or two. I don’t get to the studio on the weekends, but I do still work on weekend days.

Now, we hear that you’re big on cooking?

Yes! I love cooking. I cook breakfast almost every day and dinner as often as I can. It’s like therapy. There’s something about putting away all of my electronics and doing something with my hands for twenty minutes that involves no higher mental capabilities. I’m pretty good at taking whatever happens to be in the fridge and turning it into something. We didn’t do the CSA this year because I’ve been traveling too much, but most years we belong to a CSA and vegetables just show up at our door all summer long. I like eating fresh, local food.

You are definitely part of an awesome creative community in Brooklyn. Have you always been part of a community?

I moved to New York because I decided to work in publishing and all the publishers are in NY. But I worked in publishing for a lot of years and never felt like I belonged to a community. I knew a lot of people, but never quite fit in, especially toward the later years because I became an evangelist for the web. There just wasn’t a shared vocabulary around that. I was talking about things that other people weren’t, or they were talking about them differently. For many years, I was the outsider.

That’s why I gravitated so strongly to the Happy Cog folks when I started working with them. Suddenly there were these people who understood, who had a lot of expertise, and who were supportive. I’d been looking for that and latched onto it. It’s made such a huge difference. You can see it in Brooklyn in particular with Studiomates and Brooklyn Beta. It’s an exciting time to be here. There’s something about the Brooklynification of the whole thing—very friendly, very warm, like let’s go work at a bar for a couple hours and bang out this new feature. Or, you tell me about your project and I’m gonna put you in touch with the eight people I know that you need to talk to. I’m grateful to have that.

Current album on repeat?

I’m going to get a lot of shit for this answer, but I barely listen to music at all. So much of what I do is dependent on words—writing, editing, reading—and I cannot listen to music and do those at the same time. Over the course of the last few years, music has gradually disappeared out of my life. The only time I listen to music is at the gym. Keith made me a playlist with Tool, Deftones, Nine Inch Nails, and so on. But outside of that, music doesn’t fit into my life anymore.

Favorite movie?

I have so many favorite movies. I love the old Terry Gilliam films, Brazil and Time Bandits. Or, Jim Jarmusch’s films, Ghost Dog and Dead Man. I’m a big Terrence Malick fan and loved The Tree of Life. I like those slow films that take over your senses. What else? Old Coen brothers stuff—Barton Fink and Miller’s Crossing. Also, the Gus Van Sant trilogy of Gerry, Elephant, and Last Days is one of my favorites.

Favorite books?

I love the fiction of J.M. Coetzee. He wrote Waiting for the Barbarians and Life & Times of Michael K. There’s a starkness to his writing that I admire. They’re devastating in this slow, quiet way. His later books venture into this weird metafiction where he’s writing his own obituary into his novels.

There’s a writer named Alberto Manguel who writes about reading. I’m a huge fan. The writing is lucid and compelling and has really affected me and the writing I do on A Working Library.

The Gift by Lewis Hyde is a favorite and I think everyone who’s making anything should read it. It’s about art, but it applies to so much of what all of us do.

I went through a period in college where I was completely obsessed with Thomas Pynchon. I have four copies of Gravity’s Rainbow, each one dog-eared. Two are held together with rubber bands. I had to read it over and over so many times to figure out what the fuck was going on. There’s so much ambition and architecture to his books.

And I’m a huge fan of Hyphen Press, and Robin Kinross’ work in particular. Unjustified Texts and Modern Typography are both so good. There isn’t any better writing on design.

Favorite food?

I like really simple foods. I love fried chickpeas. You take chickpeas, fry them in olive oil with smoked paprika, cayenne pepper, salt. It’s one of my favorites. Something I’ve discovered recently is Shishito peppers, which are long, mild peppers that you can pan-fry really quickly and toss in sea salt. You can eat the whole pepper; they’re not spicy at all. I love that kind of eating where you take something and do almost nothing to it and it’s just delicious. In the summer I like making roasted tomato soups or ratatouille.

I was a vegetarian for a lot of years and I still eat a lot of vegetables, but I’m post-vegetarian these days. I’m walking distance from a restaurant called Prime Meats in Carroll Gardens that serves Cote de Boeuf, a dry-aged steak. They show you the steak before they cook it so you can see all the marbling. It’s just a really good cut of meat, seasoned, seared briefly. It was super rare, salty on the outside, and mellow on the inside, served with a simple watercress and lemon salad.

What kind of legacy do you hope to leave?

I’ve been thinking about this question and I honestly don’t know the answer. I know a little bit around the answer, but I don’t quite know what the answer is. There’s something about the act of editing, which is such a big part of what I’ve been doing for the last couple of years, that feels like it might be it. When you’re editing something that someone else made, you’re helping them be the best version of themselves, but not in a way that inserts yourself into it. If you look at something I’ve edited, you shouldn’t see me, you should see the other person. That experience is really rewarding and I think it’s something I’m good at. It’s powerful in the sense that you’re allowing someone to do something that they might not have been able to do if it wasn’t for that support. If I’m able to inspire people to do better, that’s pretty much the best legacy. I don’t know if that’s enough or if it will change, but right now, it feels right.