Who is Allison?
Although most of her work is done for organizations on other campuses, former Fine Arts major Allison McCartney is a talented visual artist responsible for co-designing many of the T-shirts sold every year at Wash U. Skilled at turning the practical into the creative, Allison got into the T-shirt designing business at the suggestion of a friend. She took an opportunity for which she admits she wasn’t quite qualified for and has since “learned on the job.” Through her experiences, she’s gotten a glimpse of what it’s like to turn passion into profit and she’ll tell you: “whatever I do, it’ll be creative.”
// CONNECT
Want to connect with Allison? E-mail her at amcCartney@wustl.edu
// INTERVIEW
On deriving inspiration from other cultures…
I get inspiration from a lot of different sources. I really like graphic design and I’ve studied how it has developed over the past half century. I’m also really interested in art and design from other cultures, especially Arabic calligraphy and modernist design from Japan and from Europe. When brought to America, I think that these are the types of design elements that are really exciting, new and change the way that people respond to graphic design.
On evolving…
I definitely see myself taking more risks now. When I first started doing these jobs I tried to figure out exactly what the client wanted. I wouldn’t take that many chances, worried they might not like what I came up with. But now, after I’ve had more experience, I trust my judgment more. And if they don’t ask for something and I put it in anyway, a lot of times people will like it. My more innovative ideas are what clients like the best, so I’ve been trying to make a point of taking more creative liberties.
On compromise…
So there are a lot of times when the customer asks for something that I think will take them in the wrong direction or send the wrong message. So what I try to do is make a T-shirt with their design on it and one with my design on it and then let them choose between the two. Often, I’ll give subtle clues in my emails to them about why certain design elements are going to be more effective than others. A lot of times we’ll find a middle ground between my more design-y T-shirts and their more straight-forward ones.
On designing in Arabic…
I use words as elements in my design. It’s like manipulating font and typography in English, but using an entirely different alphabet with an entirely different set of rules. The difference is that the rules are far more straightforward. I like that a lot actually. There aren’t as many rules with Arabic so I get to have that much more fun playing with the letters.
On music…
I listen to everything, basically, as long as it’s not country. I guess that’s kind of the mainstream opinion though [about the music taste of Texans.] Yeah, I’m from Texas but I don’t like country.
Collaborators: Briana Pickens, Sohrab Golestani, Max Campbell, Dakari Quimby