ABOUT
I'm Austin Dingess, the designer and artist behind Collect & Contrast, an independent creative studio. The name initially came from my background as a collage artist. I collected materials and ideas and put them together. As a designer, I’ve always been drawn to contrasting elements like color, composition, and concepts. To me, this was a perfect summation of who I am as a creative. Someone exploring the in-betweens. The gray areas between two separate ideas that might be at odds with one another.
At first, this is what Collect & Contrast meant to me. But as I’ve developed as an artist and person, I noticed that it was much deeper than that. I grew up in an environment that often dealt in binaries. The world is black and white. Good and bad. There are clear lines that we understood and could count on. Yet, that perspective never truly stuck with me. When I saw a differing perspective, I often wondered, "They feel really strong about this. Why is that?”
That curiosity led me toward people, communities, and ideas I might otherwise never have encountered. Some challenged everything I thought I knew. Others gave me a new way of looking at something I'd never questioned. Either way, my world went from black and white to gray.
That’s where I fell in love with the contrast. Two things that almost seem like opposites operating together in harmony. Where the old meets the new. Where the loud meets the quiet. Where the ground meets the sky. That's what Collect & Contrast means to me. Collecting ideas, questioning assumptions, and bringing different perspectives together to create something that wouldn't have existed otherwise.
Design isn’t just my job, it’s my passion. I believe how we spend our time reflects what we love, so I dedicate an hour every day to exploring design and pushing my creative limits.
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