Alison Garnett

Alison Garnett, another grad of the Web Design program at Sheridan College came in to speak with us today. Before taking on her newest role as Creative Director at Critical Mass, she worked as a Creative Brand Lead at TAXI Canada, Associate Creative Director at Henderson Bas, and Creative Director at Supercapacity (Self-employed) among other endeavours. Check her out on LinkedIn, follow her on Twitter @supercapacity, or have a look at her work, alisongarnett.com, flickr, my lalaland, hello blog, land of sparkalot, and the valigirls blog.

Alison also balances a family life with her husband (a photographer), two children, and three dogs. She is a Designer, Art Director, Project Manager, Account Manager, Stylist, Photographer, Blogger, Writer, Illustrator, good cop and bad cop. I think I can safely say we are talking about a prolific artist here.


Alison made the move to Critical Mass because, after six years at Taxi she was becoming too comfortable. She was eager to work on big websites, and learn more about pure interactivity and mobile.


A complete identity and website re-design at Theodore Alexander, a high-end furniture company. This involved convincing the company to re-shoot, and re-touch 4000 pieces of furniture. Power of the pitch! At CM they refer to it as the 'ask plus'. Always do more than what the client asks for in a pitch. If they want to see three mock-up pages, do five. Then show them how it will work on mobile and present it all in a video.


At Taxi Alison was able to work on great brands like Mini, Town Shoes, Cadillac Fairview and Telus. Taxi ran the entire interactive campaign for Telus, an exciting opportunity that opened the doors for lots of creativity. Getting to work on photo shoots with pigmy goats was just one of the perks! Telus does a great job finding fun songs for this campaign. Think I remember my mom turning this one up in the car more than a couple times. Just Hall and Oates killing it back in the 80's.


Branding is really important. Alison's advice is to have a great business card and some kind of leave behind. Remember that it's all about the work. Look for fun ways to share your art, like instagram magnets, check out moo.com, and don't forget to send urls.



From Alison's Flickr. What I took most from this presentation was the importance of personal work. Alison stressed that you can't rely on your job to satisfy your creativity. Although you're working in a creative field, there may be only 3 or 4 projects a year that are really rewarding as an artist. It's obvious that Alison also takes care to find balance and prioritize her family life. That was really cool to hear about.

And remember, it's only advertising. So have fun and make cool shit!