The Hired Wrights
The members share a common passion of creating compelling and influential works fueled by a mixture of specialty and creativity.
Forest Gagne '14
The Hired Wrights is a collective of 14 artists, designers, and craftspeople who offer services encompassing illustration, graphic design, woodworking, sculpture, bookbinding, printing, and more. Based in Portland, Maine, “the members of HW came from all over to join up behind a common passion of creating compelling and influential works fueled by a mixture of speciality and creativity.” They all have college degrees and solid freelance experience.
The Hired Wrights was co-founded by graphic designer Hugh McCormick ’15, who was raised in Baltimore, Maryland, where he worked as a horseback riding instructor and wilderness trip leader before enrolling at MECA&D. “Hugh is a firm believer in creating a voice through a harmony of form, content and delivery. He is interested in finding innovative and influential design solutions through the balance of aesthetic quality and creative direction. He has targeted focuses in branding, apparel design, packaging and print/web based advertising, but despises the idea of in any way being limited to those practices.”
Illustration by Liz Long '14
The collective includes many other MECA&D alumni, who bring a broad range of expertises to the table, such as Johnny Dickinson ’14 (woodworking), Forest Gagne ’14 (woodworking), Liz Long ’14 (illustration), Brady Price ’14 (printmaking and illustration), Anna Taylor ’14 (graphic design and illustration), Nick Gonthier ’15 (illustration and sculpture), Emma McCabe ’15 (illustration and book binding), John Novak ’15 (graphic and exhibition design), Joe Lendway ’15 (woodworking), and Patrick Scholz ’15 (photography). Past clients and collaborators include The VIA Agency, Kingspøke, Might and Main, Creative Work Systems, Maine Leather Co., and many others. As a collaborative venture, The Hired Wrights is especially situated to work on projects that require more than one skill and the ability to tap
many resources.