About Andrew Davidson, Owner of Under Design

Andrew Under Davidson grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia (Flourtown, PA to be exact). Born in December of 1969, he gets very little (but at least some) claim to be a 'child of the sixties'. 'Children of the Sixties' might be more appropriate, as he was not born alone. He and his fraternal twin were raised in a time when TV had 2 big knobs and 6 channels, and the back yard had 1000 adventures waiting to happen. Soon joined by 2 younger brothers, Andrew survived childhood with no broken bones and a creative streak that everyone noticed early in life. Andrew majored in Art all 4 years in High School, where his teacher encouraged him to continue his art education by attending Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.

After Andrew earned his BFA in Film/Video in 1992, he moved back to Philadelphia and began his career as a designer rave party promoter. In an effort to save money during these 'rave' productions, he began designing flyers for his own events. He used his years in art school to hone his skills with a Macintosh SE computer, and more importantly, the way they were used in the print production process. In the times before this, graphic designers used press tape and hand-lettering along with a skilled negative stripper to do complex color separations for full-color printing. Now a computer can do it from the desktop. Some of his prolific flyer designs were published in coffee-table books...

A whirlwind trial-by-fire later, Andrew found himself with an eye for design and a set of print production skills that were catching other promoters attention. One flyer design job lead to another, and next thing you know, he's using his print experience to broker print jobs with other designers and printers, dealing with pre-press and file conversion. To expand his repertoire in web printing and the print process, he began co-publishing a (short-lived) monthly magazine called Slurp! based on East Coast rave culture with a high-school friend.

Now digging deep in his Macintosh Centris 610, and inspired by the slew of CD-ROM distributed Magazines, he started development of eSlurp! a multimedia magazine distributed on 1.4mb floppy disks (remember them?). Halfway into development of his second issue, he got his first job in computer graphics/multimedia development. Finally, a real job playing with computers! We can bore you with the tedium of developing Sales Force Multimedia Applications for such Fortune 500 companies as AT&T, IBM, and DuPont, but we won't. To say the least, his computer was running nearly 24 hours a day as he developed user interfaces, wrote lingo code, and developed hard-drive based graphic applications in nearly every object-oriented language available in the day. He left within a year, burned out by the long hours and an unstable executive team.

Returning his focus to print work, he delved back into his independent design business, continuing to design flyers for raves and nightclub events, only to be drawn out by the world wide web. A common friend introduced Andrew to Christian Ludwig, who was head-hunting for someone looking to start niche-based 'portals' before 'portals' became the buzzword of the late 1990s. Andrew was in charge of design and HTML for the companies 'NetFocus' line of branded ISP Products, a full-fledged community portal used by Earthlink and Netscape. The funding ran out quicker then the subscribers came, so the two friends left to form 2World Network Solutions Inc., a web design and development company in 1996.

Having been developing for the world wide web since the very beginning, Andrew has seen technologies come and go. Initial designs are still up on the web today that were written in HTML version 2. Andrew managed to learn how to write HTML native (still does), Cold Fusion code, CSS, Javascript and Database design with the multitude of challenges and experiences that come with a web design firm intent on giving their customers the next level of design and elegant user interface. Some notable web site designs include Robbin's 8th & Walnut, Herman Goldner, Co. as well as an entire portal service and user interface (news, email, bookmarks) for a TV set-top box service for Spain.

Under does not throw raves anymore, but can be found running the show over at Hang Free, a bi-annual summer outdoor DJ music event (1995-2022). When he's free to rock the turntables as a DJ, he spins funky breaks, pop-hop, big beat and mash-ups. Lately, it's been less with vinyl and more with a laptop, allowing him to carry days of music with him, and pleasing song-requests at weddings. DJ Under's longest club residency would be Sugarplum Fridays at Fluid Nightclub on 4th off South from their opening in 199? until 1999. Feel free to download or listen to old DJ sets, listed oldest to newest: Hang Free 2004, Hang Free Memorial Day 2008, Hang Free Labor Day 2008, Hang Free Memorial Day 2011, Hang Free Memorial Day 2012, Live at Jet Wine Bar 2012, and finally New Years Eve Set 2012.

The fully adult Andrew whips his stable of personal servers into running bleeding edge installs of Apache, PHP, MySQL, WebDAV and NetBios services and keep terabytes of online storage for his personal amusement. He once invented, built, and marketed a consumer product and lately has been hitting the record button pretty hard lately, doing tons of audio conversions for a nationwide audience of beloved customers!

Since being named TIME Magazine's 2006 Person of the Year, he's been touring and doing speaking engagements all over the world. An artist at heart, Andrew continues to produce art, including adding to an ever-growing collection of pieces in his traveling In Case Of... Art show. He splits his week between audio conversion services, and still finds some weekly time to apply his artists's eye to refurbishing houses with his side business of UnderHomes, LLC - Handcraft Restored Family Homes in Philadelphia.

Then the Pandemic Occurred

Post pandemic, UnderHomes finished and rented our first development property and is seeking new real estate opportunities. While we managed to survive and stay open during the Pandemic, our Audio+ Conversion services online orders deteriorated to less than one order per week, so we've planned the sunsetting and retirement from that service business in 2025, after achieving 20 years of service.

We solo launched a fast casual fashion line in 2024 spreading individuals love worldwide: Initials.Love is the digital lookbook and multilingual landing page directing end consumers to one of 676 (26 x 26) combinations of 'I Heart Two Letters' designs available in seven international markets - including Japan, United Kingdom, America, and most of Europe. Inspired by the 'I Heart NY' logo made famous by designer Milton Glaser for NYS in 1977, now anyone can wear their love for N.J., J.Z., or even me: A.D.!

This was our largest matrix of designs and markets we'd tackled to date, after finding some breakout successes with our first fast casual fashion lines of Up Our Alley Bowling Shirts, Philadelphia-area only Jawn.us and US/UK lines FamousFirstNames.com (2023) along with RailwayFan.Club, introduced in Fall 2024.