Six Questions for Horacio Acevedo

Meet Horacio Acevedo, BatesMeron’s newest Senior Designer! A lifelong Chicagoan and urban arts enthusiast, Horacio brings to the table an eye for clean, minimal design and the ability to work across a variety of disciplines to bring our clients’ dreams to life.

I interviewed Horacio as part of our 6 Questions feature: a series of one-on-one interviews with people we work with who make us proud. Sometimes I like to turn the tables and put our own staffers in the hot seat so you not only get to meet them, but also see just how special our team really is.

1)   You know by now that we can’t begin the interview process without a little Spill the Bees icebreaker. From a randomly drawn card: What’s your favorite movie quote?

“I just felt like running.” – Forrest Gump

I like this quote so much that I’m actually considering having it tattooed on my leg next to my other tattoo (also running themed). I usually find it difficult to explain to people why I started running, and this really just gets to the point.

2)   You were born and raised in Chicago, so we’re dying to hear your expert opinion on the best spots in the city.

I never get tired of the lakefront. Over the summer, I go to the lakefront almost daily. There is so much happening all the time and you also get the best view of the city from the lakefront path.

3)   When did you realize that design was the right career move for you?

Growing up, I knew art was the direction I would be taking with my career. I always loved personalizing my belongings, from pencils to electronics, always looking into making them unique. In grade school, I would find myself creating logos for myself and went as far as getting into silk screening, laser etching and even CNC milling just to get things to look the way I envisioned. I’ve also always had an obsession with things lining up and having a structure, which has really worked well in my career.

BONUS: What was the journey that led you to BatesMeron?

In my previous position, I was only working with clientele in the food and consumer goods industry. This left me wanting to work with other types of clients. At that time, I was doing a lot of freelance work and realized I was enjoying the challenges of working with startup clients. One night I was curiously searching through open job listings and came across BMSD. Once I went through our website and saw the wide array of projects, I knew this was the studio I could see myself working at and learning from while being able to push my creativity.

4)   If you could design anything in the world (yes, anything) what would you pick and why?

I have always wanted to design a sort of AR (augmented reality) butler. I envision this as a program for a device, such as a Google Glass, that would provide information from many websites and pick up from user behavior to constantly pull data on the fly. As someone who is always on the go, this would make my life so much easier. I would be able to see train times automatically come up as I make my walk to the train station in the morning, or bring up news or overall data relevant to me as I go on with my day. I like the challenge that comes with creating an interface for something that is still new technology, where the number of opportunities in interaction with these interfaces is pretty much still unexplored.

5)   You’re a self-proclaimed adrenaline junkie. What’s the most daring challenge you’ve ever taken on?

A few years back, when I was barely even getting into running, I decided to make my first official race the Chicago Marathon. I would always hear from people how it took them years of training before they considered running their first marathon, but I decided to make it my first one—and I actually expected it to go a lot worse. I was fine. I think this highlights my approach on things: I don’t let anything hold me back. If I am interested in something, I go all in right from the start.

6)   Last question! Give us your top three sources for creative inspiration.

Magazines: I occasionally like to visit my local library and hang out in the magazine room and just go through all them. I love seeing the creativity used to really push the articles. Wired magazine is definitely one of my favorites for editorial design.

Dribbble: there’s a lot of great work on this site. Even though a lot of the content starts to look the same across various artists, it is clear to see where trends are going.

The Outdoors!: When I go out running, I like to keep an eye out for inspiration, whether it’s seeing the interaction of colors in nature or observing ads along my path that really capture my attention. I currently have hundreds of the most random photos on my phone which would probably confuse anyone else.