29.6.08

$50,000+ in student loans later...




yeah, so i have a BFA degree and all and i am back to working a part time job! whoo hooo. at least in the meantime while i find a real design job somewhere...yeah. target! i am working in the softlines dept...which is basically clothing and accessories and what not. at least i will be surrounded with great design while i fold and sort clothing!

i am setting up an interview at a big agency just outside of washington DC in rockville, md in a week or so...they are flying me out there and everything!! exciting! i haven't been on a place since 1998! so lame, i know.

i am also setting up some freelance work with the nyc office of hill & knowlton. i spoke with them this past friday about a possible job opening. turns out they just started up a special in-house design dept,. within their marketing firm. they were impressed with my work and want to see how well i work with them before making any decisions. if i do get hired i would be moving to either nyc or chicago!

last week i also found out that i got work accepted in the biannual niagara frontier art exhibit at the kenan center in lockport. the show is juried by the curator of the burchfield-penny art gallery. i had 2 book projects chosen (both spam books and both wood covered books) chosen...2 out of 54 other pieces by 38 other lucky artists. hope to win some $$$. would be nice!

anywho. thats all.

26.6.08

coolest branding guide i have ever seen.




not sure who did this...i found it on ffffound.com

for robert horne group a paper supplier from the UK

my first show in NYC

my work invades new york. thats right.

i am part of a group show of BFA graduates from alfred university at kathleen cullen fine arts gallery in chelsea.

here is the ad on art slant!

SUMMER IN THE CITY

penises everywhere!

check out these new ads for an AIDS awareness campaign



see how they were done here...

weird. but me likey.

24.6.08



i love coming across humorous displays of unconventional type!!

found on ffffound.com

here is the direct link...hope you know german :)

featured on joshspear.com!




read the flattering article here

w00t. one of my projects from my senior BFA thesis is being featured on joshspear.com. flattering article written by matt gierhart.

:)

now if only i could get a job...

20.6.08

cuhraaaazy stuff!

amazing unconventional type!


18.6.08

w00t

new website launched this evening!



www.allisonwilton.com

16.6.08

4.6.08

life has been exciting!

in honor of my upcoming interview with bruce mau, a design icon, here are some rules to live by. posted here is his "incomplete manifesto for growth, a great set of rules to ruminate on. enjoy!!!

An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth

Written in 1998, the Incomplete Manifesto is an articulation of statements that exemplify Bruce Mau's beliefs, motivations and strategies. It also articulates how the BMD studio works.

1. Allow events to change you. You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.

2. Forget about good. Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you'll never have real growth.

3. Process is more important than outcome. When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we've already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there.

4. Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child). Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day.

5. Go deep. The deeper you go the more likely you will discover something of value.

6. Capture accidents. The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions.

7. Study. A studio is a place of study. Use the necessity of production as an excuse to study. Everyone will benefit.

8. Drift. Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism.

9. Begin anywhere. John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere.

10. Everyone is a leader. Growth happens. Whenever it does, allow it to emerge. Learn to follow when it makes sense. Let anyone lead.

11. Harvest ideas. Edit applications. Ideas need a dynamic, fluid, generous environment to sustain life. Applications, on the other hand, benefit from critical rigor. Produce a high ratio of ideas to applications.

12. Keep moving. The market and its operations have a tendency to reinforce success. Resist it. Allow failure and migration to be part of your practice.

13. Slow down. Desynchronize from standard time frames and surprising opportunities may present themselves.

14. Don’t be cool. Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort.

15. Ask stupid questions. Growth is fueled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant.

16. Collaborate. The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential.

17. ____________________. Intentionally left blank. Allow space for the ideas you haven’t had yet, and for the ideas of others.

18. Stay up late. Strange things happen when you’ve gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you're separated from the rest of the world.

19. Work the metaphor. Every object has the capacity to stand for something other than what is apparent. Work on what it stands for.

20. Be careful to take risks. Time is genetic. Today is the child of yesterday and the parent of tomorrow. The work you produce today will create your future.

21. Repeat yourself. If you like it, do it again. If you don’t like it, do it again.

22. Make your own tools. Hybridize your tools in order to build unique things. Even simple tools that are your own can yield entirely new avenues of exploration. Remember, tools amplify our capacities, so even a small tool can make a big difference.

23. Stand on someone’s shoulders. You can travel farther carried on the accomplishments of those who came before you. And the view is so much better.

24. Avoid software. The problem with software is that everyone has it.

25. Don’t clean your desk. You might find something in the morning that you can’t see tonight.

26. Don’t enter awards competitions. Just don’t. It’s not good for you.

27. Read only left-hand pages. Marshall McLuhan did this. By decreasing the amount of information, we leave room for what he called our "noodle."

28. Make new words. Expand the lexicon. The new conditions demand a new way of thinking. The thinking demands new forms of expression. The expression generates new conditions.

29. Think with your mind. Forget technology. Creativity is not device-dependent.

30. Organization = Liberty. Real innovation in design, or any other field, happens in context. That context is usually some form of cooperatively managed enterprise. Frank Gehry, for instance, is only able to realize Bilbao because his studio can deliver it on budget. The myth of a split between "creatives" and "suits" is what Leonard Cohen calls a 'charming artifact of the past.'

31. Don’t borrow money. Once again, Frank Gehry’s advice. By maintaining financial control, we maintain creative control. It’s not exactly rocket science, but it’s surprising how hard it is to maintain this discipline, and how many have failed.

32. Listen carefully. Every collaborator who enters our orbit brings with him or her a world more strange and complex than any we could ever hope to imagine. By listening to the details and the subtlety of their needs, desires, or ambitions, we fold their world onto our own. Neither party will ever be the same.

33. Take field trips. The bandwidth of the world is greater than that of your TV set, or the Internet, or even a totally immersive, interactive, dynamically rendered, object-oriented, real-time, computer graphic–simulated environment.

34. Make mistakes faster. This isn’t my idea -- I borrowed it. I think it belongs to Andy Grove.

35. Imitate. Don’t be shy about it. Try to get as close as you can. You'll never get all the way, and the separation might be truly remarkable. We have only to look to Richard Hamilton and his version of Marcel Duchamp’s large glass to see how rich, discredited, and underused imitation is as a technique.

36. Scat. When you forget the words, do what Ella did: make up something else ... but not words.

37. Break it, stretch it, bend it, crush it, crack it, fold it.

38. Explore the other edge. Great liberty exists when we avoid trying to run with the technological pack. We can’t find the leading edge because it’s trampled underfoot. Try using old-tech equipment made obsolete by an economic cycle but still rich with potential.

39. Coffee breaks, cab rides, green rooms. Real growth often happens outside of where we intend it to, in the interstitial spaces -- what Dr. Seuss calls "the waiting place." Hans Ulrich Obrist once organized a science and art conference with all of the infrastructure of a conference -- the parties, chats, lunches, airport arrivals — but with no actual conference. Apparently it was hugely successful and spawned many ongoing collaborations.

40. Avoid fields. Jump fences. Disciplinary boundaries and regulatory regimes are attempts to control the wilding of creative life. They are often understandable efforts to order what are manifold, complex, evolutionary processes. Our job is to jump the fences and cross the fields.

41. Laugh. People visiting the studio often comment on how much we laugh. Since I've become aware of this, I use it as a barometer of how comfortably we are expressing ourselves.

42. Remember. Growth is only possible as a product of history. Without memory, innovation is merely novelty. History gives growth a direction. But a memory is never perfect. Every memory is a degraded or composite image of a previous moment or event. That’s what makes us aware of its quality as a past and not a present. It means that every memory is new, a partial construct different from its source, and, as such, a potential for growth itself.

♥!

43. Power to the people. Play can only happen when people feel they have control over their lives. We can't be free agents if we’re not free.

3.6.08

hello again.

hello blog. how's it going?

its 1:11 AM on june 3, 2008 and i thought that i would introduce myself again. i don't know what it is about online journal or blog type things, i can never stay interested long enough to diligently write in them every day. but, being unemployed and all has given me a lot of time to think about things and re-examine my life as it is. i want something to look back on in a few years and laugh at. either that or something to reminisce about. also, i want something that keeps track of interesting things found on the interweb aesthetically related, mostly.

wow. i am a college grad. i am really getting old. i now have a BFA in design and printmaking. w00t. o here are some pictures of my thesis project. i designed and produced a series of 16 artist books examining social aspects of contemporary web culture. i completed my thesis project in one semester, and it was a shit ton of work. in the end i had an amazing show and it was so worth it. i have been contacting gallery directors in the buffalo area lately about getting into shows, and today actually i was invited to have work shown in an altered book show at the impact gallery in downtown buffalo. i also entered two of my books in a juried show at the kenan center in lockport. hopefully i get into that show, there are some decent cash prizes.

speaking of cash, i need a job. really bad. i had a decent shot at getting a job at crowley webb and associates in buffalo doing design and print production (mostly production, now it seems) but was rejected. turns out they hired their intern because he/she had more production experience. they had me come in for a day and test what i knew and they paid me for it. i thought i did pretty damn well too. o well. i am hoping for bigger and better opportunities.

i have three other job prospects at the moment. one is at partners + napier in rochester, the other at wynne creative group in buffalo and the third i was called about today is at mason selkowitz mcdermott an advertising agency in penfield outside of rochester. i am waiting on a second interview at partners + napier, which is pretty much my top choice at the moment. its a huge nyc-like ad agency where the creative department is divided into teams which deal with specific clients individually. i remember the person i interviewed with there mentioning there are 24 creative directors there! holy hell. anyways i really like the atmosphere there and it would be a great place to start my career. i had an interview last week at wynne creative group in buffalo. my MOM works there. the position i interviewed for is an art director. rob wynne the principal told me that he didn't limit the experience for this job opening, just because he wants to see everything out there at the moment. he told me that he would cater the position to the experience level of the person he hires. the good thing about this job would be i would be able to jump right into the creative process more than most entry-level positions. rather than getting stuck doing mechanicals and ad resizes for a few years, i could start concepting for logos and creating ads right away! the third position i dont know much about yet. i saw an ad posted on adhub for an entry-level design position at mason selkowitz mcdermott in penfield, ny. i checked out their website, and they seem to have some decent clients. i totally judge agencies by their website, and theirs is pretty damn nice, really. my interview is this tuesday at 11am. hopefully this ones a winner!

i am really hoping for anything at this point. i am sick of waiting and not having an income. bills are due and payments need to be made. there is no time for this uncertainty. plus i need to save up and move out of my house. i am kind of getting sick of living in constant scrutiny of the parental unit.

hmm. its almost 2am and my eyelids are closing. hopefully i can stay tuned into my blog and write more often. it feels good.