Another Weapons Of Mass Creation has come and gone, and this was, as we all expected, the best one yet. After having a table, and a small Q&A the first year, to being a featured designer again the second year, I am so grateful for the fest that I decided to be an official gold sponsor of the event this year.
My buddy Josh flew up from Memphis, and came along to Cleveland with me. We set up our monster-of-a-table in the iLTHY Workshop, and began seeing some old and new faces at Friday night’s mixer party.
Saturday and Sunday, we got in, and got to slingin’ goods alongside the likes of OKPants, Oliver Barrett, Dan Cassaro, Nate Utesch, Rachel Novak, Brian Jasinski, Dan Christofferson, Glen Infante, and Jen K.
While I’ve been a freelance designer for a long time, this is the first time I had any product to sell. It was overwhelming to see people appreciating the work in person, and telling me so. I was humbled and excited.
Highlights that pop to mind are getting to meet and have conversation with both Johnny Cupcakes, and Jacqui Oakley. There are just too many people to list, but I had some very great conversations with so many people. My throat has been sore all week.
I guess the concept that I’m taking away from WMC 2012 is the fact that this camaraderie in the design community is rare, and this is an opportunity to connect with a bunch of creatives that spend most of the year with their heads down, grinding out great work, but can get a change to converse with other creatives who actually know what each other is talking about.
The overall theme that I kept coming back to in most of my conversations was the idea that we have to work hard to make art our living. While the image of an artist tends to convey some hippy skipping through a field, the reality is that those of us who actually make our living with our art, love making that art so much that we fully immerse ourselves in it, working longer than the majority of nine-to-fivers. We have to fight to make this our living, and as someone who IS an artist for a living, I can say that it is SO worth the fight.
My man Kevin Maestros was clutch. He shot this quick recap video below for me. Check him out here.
