Willie Baronet

Willie Baronet, Unseen, 2012

      
Willie Baronet was the owner and creative director of GroupBaronet (now
MasonBaronet) from 1992-2006. His design and advertising work has been
featured in many national and international competitions. In 2013 he was given
the AIGA Fellow award, the highest honor an AIGA chapter can bestow upon
one of its members.
He has spoken to various business, creative, educational and social
organizations over the years, including TEDxSMU. Willie graduated with an MFA
in Arts and Technology from UTD in 2011. His art has been featured in a
number of group exhibitions including the 15th Annual “No Dead Artists” at the
Jonathan Ferrara Gallery in New Orleans, LA, “INVASIONEN/INVASIONS” at the
Galerie Carolyn Heinz in Hamburg, Germany, and the “500XPO 2012” at 500X in
Dallas. He has also had a number of solo exhibitions (Texas, Pennsylvania, New
York).
Willie has been buying and collecting homeless signs since 1993 as part of a
long term art project titled "WE ARE ALL HOMELESS." In 2014 he began a 31-day
cross country trip to buy signs in 24 cities, and began filming a documentary
about the process (Signs of Humanity, due out Spring 2016). This project has
been featured in dozens of international and local media, including Yahoo!
News, NPR - All Things Considered, The Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, Al Jazeera
America and Fast Company’s blog, posted by Katie Couric. An UpWorthy video
about the project that was uploaded on August 31, 2015 has been viewed over
6.3 million times. He recently did installations of WE ARE ALL HOMELESS in
conjunction with both the Republican and Democratic National Conventions.
Willie is the Stan Richards Professor of Creative Advertising at SMU's Temerlin
Advertising Institute where he teaches classes related to creativity and portfolio
development.

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