I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Aaron Mahnke, a designer, writer, and the curator of Read & Trust

Tell us a bit about yourself. We know you love writing and design – care to share a bit more about your personal side?

First and foremost I’m a husband and father. I’m pretty lucky to have an amazing wife who encourages me to pursue my dreams and try new things. She’s my sounding board and my biggest fan. And my two little girls are my biggest source of inspiration and drive; it’s up to me to build a life for them that fosters creativity and exploration, strength and courage.

Aside from family, design and writing, I fill my “spare” time with reading and creating. About a decade ago I taught myself how to bind books, and though it’s been a while since I’ve tackled a new project, those are very relaxing, almost meditative moments. And I love reading. Interestingly enough, I read more non-fiction than fiction. Perhaps it’s my way of gathering ideas and information for the fiction that I write. So I tend to read books on history, culture, language and forgotten worlds.

On the lifestyle side of things (if anyone cares), my family follows the pale diet fairly closely, and we work out at a local CrossFit to make sure we are taking care of our health and well-being. And I’ve got to say, watching my wife dead-lift more than her own body weight is a sight to behold!

What was your first job growing up?

I was barely sixteen when my mom’s good friend gave me a job at the auto-parts store she and her husband ran in my hometown. I was this fresh, innocent little kid spending long shifts with gruff mechanics and even worse customers. But my primary job was to drive the deliveries to the various garages around the town that had ordered parts and paint.

I learned to drive standard transmission in that job. Bogey was the old delivery guy, an ancient man seemingly carved from nicotine and hatred, and I had apparently been hired to take over his role. So he took me out to the delivery truck, directed me to the driver’s seat, and told me to drive. I learned to drive a stick quickly that day, though not happily.

How’d you get into writing and design? Which came first?

Writing came first. Grade school, in fact. I had one of those fifth grade teachers that thought the best way for us to perfect our handwriting and grammar was to write story after story after story. She encouraged us to make things up, write them down and even sketch illustrations to accompany them. I sadly don’t remember that teacher’s name, but she changed my life.

I have a powerful memory of being in my family van one day as a ten-year old kid. My mom and her friend were going shopping out of town, and they brought me and her daughter along. Cindy, the girl, looked over at me at some point and asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I remember holding up a wrinkled and bend bundle of notebook paper with my illegible chicken scratch on it and replying, “A writer!”

Art was there for a long time as well; drawing, building, creating things I had imagined. But it wasn’t until college that I discovered design. My great-grandmother was an amazing oil painter, but try as I might, I was never able to do it. It was too messy, too unruly. So when I encountered design, my inner OCD rejoiced. Here was something I could get behind: clean, simple art that used space and form to communicate messages and ideas. I was hooked.

Do you have any formal design training, or are you mostly self-taught?

I’m all self-taught, baby! My design training in college was pre-computers (93-97), so I learned to paint color swatted in perfect grids with a paint brush. Computers opened up a world of possibilities for designers. But thankfully, I’m a natural student, always trying to pick up something new. So when I need to know a skill for a project, I learn it.

Do you prefer to design for print or the web?

Well, that’s tricky. I’m not a developer, so for me, design is design. Tell me what size it should be, and I’ll design the art to fit, whether the space is 960px x 1000px, or 4”x6”, I don’t really think it matters. The key is understanding the place your art is going to be, and designing the layout to work in that medium. A postcard requires a different set of standards and rules for communicating than a website does.

So I’m not sure I distinguish the two. Are there output differences? Sure, and not understanding those is dangerous. But I understand – and enjoy – both. For me, the distribution of passion is more about types of design work. I personally love branding design, creating a culture and system around an idea. It’s my favorite type of project to take on.

What do you find most rewarding about your work?

It’s easy for a designer to take for granted their ability to take a concept or idea and give it a shape and form on the page. Not everyone can do that (or they’d all be designers too), so for me, helping non-visual people give their visions life is incredibly rewarding. It can be a tough road, and sometimes painful, but it’s worth it.

What’s the hardest part about freelancing?

That’s a toss-up between the loneliness of working by myself and the lack of having an in-house coach and mentor. So to help with these weak-spots, I’ve made huge efforts to build a network of friends online, and to seek out people farther down the road than I am to guide me and give me advice. Having regular, daily contacts for banter and dialogue, as well as having a small group of people to lean on for advice and direction is essential.

Who has been influential to your writing career? Your design career?

Hmm. Good question. That’s easier to answer for the writing side of my career. I grew up reading J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis after my 6th grade teacher suggested them to my mother. From there I started to read anything I could find. Most of it was good, but a few gems floated to the top and helped form my style and vision. Tad Williams is one of them. Check out his Memory, Sorrow and Thorn trilogy if you love fantasy. So incredibly epic and well done.

For design I’ve tended to blaze my own trail. I definitely lean toward the less-is-more style, and stay as minimal as possible. Design isn’t crazy fancy layouts and intricate textures. At least not to me. Design, to me, is communication. And so I aim to be clear, simple and understandable. That’s probably why I do my best work in the branding realm, rather than responsive web design or 300-page catalog design ;)

Tell us a bit about the Read & Trust network. Where’d the idea come from? How are things going so far? Any tips for someone looking to be invited?

The short explanation is that I started to notice a network of connections among a large group of online writers. They would link to each other’s posts, build conversations that spanned multiple sites and posts, and push each other toward better writing. And each of them had their own set of readers/subscribers. I remembered how hard it was in the early days to locate great online writing, and knew it would be helpful to say to someone, “Hey, you love that guy’s stuff? Well, he loves to read these other writers…maybe you should check them out too.”

The key idea behind membership is that this core group or writers already interacts with you. For an up-and-coming blogger, the best advice is to write great content, share it with R&T members, and hope that they feel it’s something they want to share with their readers. If they do that enough, over time there’s a large amount of trust built up. They read you more regularly, recommend you often. And then all of a sudden you wake up one day and realize that you’re kind of in the group already.

My job is to notice when those relationships blossom, and make sure there’s a consensus among the members, and then extend an invitation. Stephen Hackett is a great example. He’s our most recent addition, but if you thought about him and his site, you’d probably assume he has belonged all along. That’s the idea.

How has the premium newsletter approach worked thus far?

The newsletter is great for a couple of reasons. First, most of these people write in their spare time, between projects at work or in the evenings. They love doing what they do, but outside of maybe a tiny bit of ad revenue, these people write for free. So the premium newsletter allows me to pay them for the awesome stuff they write. Honestly, that’s the best feeling in the world.

The newsletter is also great because we can offer original, exclusive posts…stuff that Shawn Blanc or Patrick Rhone won’t ever post on their own sites…to whoever wants it. You just have to pay for it. Sometimes the posts are short. I get complaints about that, but the length of a written piece says nothing about quality. I’ve read 100k word novels that are absolute crap, and 3-page short stories that blew my mind. Word count is pointless. These writers bring talent and power to the table.

What’s your hardware/software setup look like?

I divide my time between a 27” iMac and a 13” MacBook Air. I run Lion on both, and have to say that I feel much more productive and flexible on the Air than I ever have on the iMac. The only benefit to the iMac is the additional storage and the larger screen, but I could learn to get by without that if I had to. I have an iPhone 4 with me at all times, and an iPad, though I refer to it as my OmniFocusPad, because that’s basically all I use it for these days.

I do most of my work inside Adobe’s Create Suite (v3 for me), and of those apps, most of my time is spent in Illustrator. I sync notes and scraps of text between Notational Velocity on my Macs and PlainText on my iPhone. and most people don’t know this, but PlainText syncs with Scrivener, my writing app of choice. Scrivener is amazing for people like me who write and publish on their own. I am able to build one manuscript and then export the various file types I need to make my fiction available on as many devices as possible. It’s built with a ton of great aids and tools that can help any type of writer too. I love it.

If you could spend a few hours over dinner with anyone in the world, who would it be and why?

Neil Gaiman. Hands-down, that man is one of my favorite authors, and his work drips with depth, creativity and fearlessness. I don’t know of any other author who has explored so many genres and reading levels. And from what I can tell, he’s a fantastic gentleman, fun to hang out with and full of mischief. And what dinner couldn’t use a bit of mischief, right?

And lastly, if you could do anything with your time (if money was no object), what would it be? 

Read and write. Honestly. I love design, and it has allowed me to take care of my family for many years. And people even say I’m really good at it. But my first and deepest love is for the written word. Give me free time and I gravitate like a heat-seeking missile toward stories – either of my own creation or someone else’s.

And travel would come in at second place. We’ve love to live abroad once the girls are a bit older, and having a portable job allows that. But if money were no object we would be seeing a lot more of the world right now.