Alison Garnet
Creative Director
Critical Mass
Alison Garnet is one busy lady. This Mother of two, Wife and keeper of three dogs juggles responsibility daily and generally manages to cram everything in before midnight. With few exceptions, this hardworking Flickr member, blogger and designer has her priorities set - Family comes first.
Following her graduation from OCAD in Drawing and Painting, she headed to Florence for a year. While she was there, her Mom saw an article in the local newspaper promoting the multi-media program at Sheridan and in 1994, with fifteen other people, she began her journey in digital media.
Following her graduation she worked at a company formerly known as ICE. She later went on to do Freelance work, then worked for Henderson Bas (where she worked with Sean Patrick another former grad); managed her company (Super Capacity), then onto Taxi for 6yrs before her recent move to Critical Mass.
If you ask Alison what she does, there is no simple answer. At any given time in her career she has played the role of Creative Director, Art Director, Project Manager, Account Manager, New Business Development, Stylist, Photographer, Blogger, Writer, Illustrator and Good/Bad Cop.
Alison's web design experience started by a simple curiosity of how things work. She would copy and paste code and just figure it out. While with ICE she worked on her first intranet and live events; however, back then web design was as simple as a GIF and a link – Times have certainly changed.
Following the international adoption of her daughter, she focused on her company "Super Capacity". The name was a screen name she used online and she adapted to her company. Inspired by the "super capacity" setting on the washing machine as it seemed to be truly reflective of everything Alison does.
Her transition to Henderson Bas as an Art Director gave her the opportunity to work on some big name brands, like Levi's, Molson and Nike. The more recognized client list launched her career and gave her award winning opportunities.
"It's not about the Perfect Company – Get as much experience as you can"
With that said, her coolest job came while at TAXI. Working with amazing people, great learning opportunities, great clients and a creative environment made for a very happy 6 year career at Taxi. Although she truly loved her time there, she recognized that the time had come to move on. She is now very happy in her new role as Creative Director at Critical Mass.
Some of her projects with Taxi included:
TownShoes, where she had her first professional photo shoot experience. She shared with us what it was like to work with a "gold fish handler", and picking the right fish for the shoot.
Another one of her accounts while with Taxi was with the LCBO. Here she focused on Micro sites. It was a challenging account with low budgets and a mixed bag of experience on the client side. The unionized staff were mostly from the marketing department, along with the "IT Guy" because he "surely would" understand the internet because he's and IT guy.
A memorable project was her work with Cadillac Fairview where the focus was on brand building. Because of a new new facility being built they were able to take advantage of incorporating their new innovative, sustainable building into their campaign development.
Alison has a love for identity design, so much so that she will eagerly take on freelance work to "get her fix".
While at Taxi the work she did focused a lot on micro sites and banner campaigns. Often the artwork would be smaller pieces to a bigger puzzle. Along with the fact that it was just time, Alison's desire to work on "a big site", along with the planning (IA), mobile, iPad etc. drove her move to Critical Mass.
With her move to Critical Mass, came the opportunity to work a big site, just like she'd wanted. Theodore Alexander, a luxury furniture designer and manufacture needed a redesign on their huge ecommerce site, which included over 4,000 pieces of furniture that desperately needed new photography. Working closely with the client, they were able to set up specifications and guidelines so that all the pieces were able to be photographed consistently.
Other big brands and sites that Alison has been able to work on include: Brita, Nestle (and sub brands) and Sears. Even with big agencies, their clients are faced with similar budget restraints that smaller companies face. These are the types of challenges they faced when working with Sears. Here they had to keep the same back end infrastructure and basically reskinned product segments as they could. It took 7 months to get through all 21 departments.
"Ask plus" is a big concept that goes a long with with Critical Mass. Alison works on a lot of pitches for new business and for each pitch they do what was asked - Plus! their recommendations on how they could take the original idea and make it into something better. This isn't just providing the ideas of what else could be done, but also has to do with how the information is presented. Long gone are the days of powerpoint. Now video and digital technology do it all.
Another recommendation from Alison is to look into entering competitions for students and other award programs. Most have small fees associated with them, however the recognition is likely to be a solid foot into the door for most potential employers.
As mentioned earlier, Alison is an avid social media butterfly herself. She maintains a variety of blogs on a variety of topics. Each one born from a curiosity as to how she could make something work and customize it to fit her design idea.
- Land of Sparkelot
- Hello
- ValiGirls
- Flickr
Each of her blogs have helped connect her to interesting people all around the world and given her a much needed creative outlet as needed.
Alison is a big fan of "leave behinds" and designers who create something unique and memorable to leave with her. Whether it's stickers, fancy business cards or something unique - to her they are valuable and memorable.
In the end - It's just Advertising. We don't save lives. Have fun and make cool shit.
