Avrie Allen is a Graphic Designer and current RISD Maharam Fellow pursuing her MFA at the Rhode Island School of Design. Email me avrie.world at gmail.com.
Avrie Allen is a Graphic Designer and current RISD Maharam Fellow pursuing her MFA at the Rhode Island School of Design. Email me avrie.world at gmail.com.
2024
Stencil for creating open-ended designs and identity systems
Lasercut acrylic stencil and specimen poster
2024
Website design and development as the Web Design Lead for the Graphic Design Triennial 2024
Visit expirationdate.risd.gd
HTML, CSS, Javascript
Gallery photos by Andrea Mato
The End of History / History of the End
2025
A book of two timelines
The first timeline documents events leading up to Francis Fukuyama’s famous proclamation of “the end of history” in 1989. The second timeline begins in 1994 with the Zapatista Uprising in Chiapas, Mexico and argues that history has, in fact, not ended. There have continued to be ruptures within and challenges to the capitalist world system since “the end of history”. People all over the world are fighting for alternatives.
Created in Open Research during RISD Wintersession 2025 with guidance from Ryan Waller
Dos-á-dos bound book
2024
10 double-sided plates interpreting and responding to Instruction on Measurement by Albrecht Durer, written in 1528. The red band surrounding the plates functions as a container, a measuring device, and includes instructions on how to arrange the plates on both sides. When arranged on side 1, which reads “To Measure is to Know”, the plates contain an interpretation of the book through Aristotle’s 10 categories. When flipped over and rearranged, Side 2, which reads “To Measure is to Rationalize / To Rationalize is to Control”, reveals a 1:1 scale of my body. I meiculously labeled a photo of myself, part-to-part, and documented within the key. It considers some modern developments of the rationalization of the body from the emergence of a burgeoning capitalist, mechanical philosophy of the body in the 1600s to facial recognition technology today.
2024
Found imagery of searches I made online for keywords like “woman,” “beauty,” etc. thinking about the inundation of misogynistic but mundane/glossed over spammy content and its effect on self-perception.
Raster engraved acrylic, mirror, metal screws, and painted dowel rods2023
Critical maps out various perspectives on the role of critical practices, agency, and change within the graphic design industry. Writing is just me summarizing others’ writings with quote excerpts. The 6 sections are ordered along a spectrum, summarizing the arguments and outlooks of various authors, designers, and studios. The zine begins by exploring the outlook of critical designers, who believe that individual designers can better the industry through cultural change and inclusive practices. It ends by looking at the perspective of designers critical of the design industry, who advocate for economic change, freedom from the industry, and organized labor over cultural change or individual practices. It also offers perspective in between, such as Angela Davis’s Mandate for a People’s Culture, in which she advocates for the production of radical culture inseparable from political movements and organization.
5.5x8.5” Zine
2024
Girlhood Redefined is a web archive and exhibition in partnership with the Kinsey Institute and funded by the Cox Scholars Program.
Visit girlhood.is
Mutimedia Installation, Web Design, Archival Research
2024
Despite the time, money, and specialized skills that go into the habitual upkeep or alteration of one’s appearance, aesthetic labor is societally unrecognized as a form of labor. Rather, aesthetic labor is mystified, particularly by the beauty industry, as a fun, easy, and expressive activity for women. Installed in Grunwald Gallery at Indiana University.
Photos by Ellie Woytek
Multimedia Installation
Custom 2-Way Mirror Video Frame and Peg Board Wall Designed and Fabricated by Me
2024
Collective publication exploring questions who are you? and where are you? created by the Fall Grad Studio 1 cohort at RISD. I designed my own section, as well as the endsheets for the book.