Monthly news and updates for AIGA members
July 2001
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Contents
News and information
Member survey findings provide
direction
AIGA Experience Design summit participants work to define
profession
www.aiga.org
Improvements in website navigation planned for fall 2001
Advocacy updates
AIGA redefines "graphic design" for U.S. Census
Members can participate in Design for Democracy campaign
Coming soon
Watch for "Voice" registration brochure in your
mailbox
Opportunities to get involved
Consider investing your tax rebate in your profession
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News and information
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Member survey findings provide direction
In May 2001, professional and associate members were
invited to participate in AIGA's first comprehensive member survey
in five years. The survey, conducted by Readex Research, was
designed to help evaluate which activities are most important
to members.
One-third of AIGA members responded, a very credible response rate. More than 250 single-spaced pages of open-ended comments from members complement the measured evaluations. The information will guide us as we make adjustments in response to current economic conditions and will help us to focus on the highest priority services as the economy recovers. AIGA staff are already working with detailed survey results to adjust our web activities, competition processing, conference content and planning and promotional efforts.
Some excerpts from the findings:
Members' attitudes toward AIGA. Members have overwhelmingly positive attitudes toward AIGA in the roles that define its positioning, with 87 percent agreeing that AIGA is well regarded in the profession, and three-quarters feeling that AIGA increases respect for design. The results signal relative success in our transition to being seen as current, stimulating, informative and able to project effectively the value of design on behalf of our members.
Nine percent of our members are not satisfied, overall, with AIGA services. We are looking closely at why, although this is a comparatively low negative rating for an association.
Sixty-one percent believe AIGA membership is a good value for the investment, with only 17 percent disagreeing with that statement.
Communication with members. We continue to seek ways to improve communication with members. The challenge is to communicate effectively with a group of extremely busy professionals for whom AIGA membership is on the periphery of otherwise compelling commitments.
One positive finding is that 70 percent of our members believe we are responsive to their needs and interests. At the same time, only 43 percent believe national and local boards represent the interests of members effectively (16 percent feel they definitely do not); and only a little over half (53 percent) feel AIGA represents their point of view on most of its positions and activities. One of the reasons for this may be that only 34 percent know how to make their voice heard with AIGA leaders and 31 percent definitely do not know how to communicate with the leaders.
The answer may be simpler than you think: try e-mail or a phone call to AIGA staff or board members. You'll be surprised at how attentive each can be. As a member, you ought to express yourself readily and clearly. You have the right to be heard!
Check the full findings on the website to find out why members belong to AIGA, how members view the relative importance of activities we engage in and more.
AIGA Experience Design summit participants
work to define profession
The AIGA Experience Design community met for the fourth
Advance for Design summit, July 12-14, and made substantial progress
on defining the professional requirements for effective work
in this realm of design where media, technology, design, content
and systems interact. The results will be used to describe the
profession to business, establish a common vocabulary and challenge
educators to define ways to meet educational needs for practitioners.
The recent dotcom contraction motivated even greater cooperation among participants. AIGA national board member Terry Swack chairs the steering committee for the community, with substantial involvement from AIGA national president Clement Mok and national board members Terry Irwin and Gong Szeto.
Committees on education, meetings and conferences, information and marketing are developing follow-up plans. The next major profession-wide activity for the group will be to help in developing the content for the next AIGA Business and Design Conference in Minneapolis in October 2002. The discourse on experience design continues in Gain and Loop.
Results
of the meeting will be available on the AIGA website by mid-August.
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www.aiga.org
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Improvements in website navigation planned for fall 2001
In the 15 months since launching the new website at
www.aiga.org, content has been added at a rate faster than the
navigation was designed to accommodate. By early fall, we will
introduce a new navigation scheme designed to make it easier
to find any particular item.
The web team responsible for both the current site and the
redesign is comprised of Tanagram, Thirdwave and Brilliant-id,
all located in Chicago. The strength of AIGA is the commitment
of member-volunteers, yet unlike other discrete design assignments,
web work continues unremittingly. Without this team's unrelenting
enthusiasm and effort, we would never be where we are today.
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Advocacy updates
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AIGA redefines "graphic design" for U.S. Census
In negotiations that have continued for three years,
AIGA has made substantial progress in achieving members' interest
in educating the public and business about the role of the designer
as a trusted advisor on communication, broadly defined. Last
year we were able to reclassify "graphic designer"
in the Standard Occupation Classification system of the Department
of Labor to include all of the elements of communication problem
solving and to have it assigned its own classification, rather
than being a subset of commercial artist.
This past month, we have worked with the U.S. Census of Business to refine the product list for the profession to include advertising and promotion design, corporate identity, design strategy and management, editorial design, exhibit and signage design, interaction design, motion graphics design, packaging design, illustration, information design and design production. We also worked to define the 39 products or services under these categories.
This is a significant step forward in our campaign to change perceptions. It defines the activities for which data will be collected in future censuses of business and which data will be credited to our profession. Hopefully, it will be a precedent for modifying the Department of Labor occupational handbook that is used by many high school and college guidance departments; working with the Small Business Administration to direct new businesses to seek appropriate services from designers; guiding the Department of Commerce's Bureau of Economic Analysis to capture the contribution our profession makes to the Gross Domestic Product (including the large interaction and motion-graphics design disciplines); and advocating federal policies that support our profession.
An indirect advantage is that it may result in AIGA being seen as the authoritative source on these disciplines, with the opportunity to use AIGA's member directory as the key source of qualified professionals.
Members can participate in Design
for Democracy campaign
At the chapter leadership retreat in June, AIGA introduced
the Design for Democracy campaign. The purpose of the campaign
is to make information design an integral part of national legislative
reform initiatives, including election reform, Social Security
reform, Medicare reform, immigration reform, tax reform, the
census and e-government.
The campaign is designed to take advantage of three levels of effort. At the national level, the executive director is making calls on members of Congress and their staffs. At the chapter level, 28 chapters have offered to form chapter advocacy teams that will generate letters to members of Congress and arrange meetings with them. We encourage all members to become involved. One watershed event in the campaign will be Design for Democracy Day, September 26, 2001, when AIGA members will arrange to meet with their congressional representatives on Capitol Hill on the last day of "Voice," AIGA's national conference.
For information on how you can get involved, visit the AIGA website, where we have instructions and draft letters, names of members of Congress we would particularly like to reach and names of local AIGA advocacy coordinators. By August 1, we will add a Congressional directory providing information on each member of Congress and prominent issue. Kate Schoff is our research assistant on this campaign and can be reached at advocacy@aiga.org.
We are working with Senator Christopher Dodd (D-Connecticut),
the chairman of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee,
to insert legislative language in his election reform bill that
would mandate information design criteria for any election reform,
as well as provide funding for research on ballot design to be
conducted by a national, nonprofit, nonpartisan professional
association for the design profession (e.g., AIGA).
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Coming soon
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Watch for "Voice" registration brochure in your
mailbox
"Voice: AIGA National Design Conference"
takes place September 2326, 2001, in Washington, D.C. Watch
for the registration brochure in your mailbox at the end of July!
In the meantime, members who have not yet registered may take
advantage of a special offer until July 31: submit a 150-word
essay on one of four topics and receive a $150 discount. Your
voice may be incorporated into the fabric of the conference in
a number of ways, including within the website, in our lobbying
campaign, during breakout sessions and even on the main stage!
Choose one of the following topics and submit your essay when
you register
online:
- How information design can strengthen citizen participation
- How I fulfill my desire to do socially responsible work without going bankrupt
- How I find my voice as a designer
- The most powerfully socially or politically motivated piece of design that I've ever done or seen
For information about more than 80 speakers and 30 breakout sessions, visit the "Voice" site at www.voice.aiga.org
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Opportunities to get involved
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Consider investing your tax rebate in your profession
If your tax rebate check has just arrived and it represents
an unexpected windfall, please consider making a contribution
of it to the future of your profession. The Creative Leadership
Campaign allows a fully tax deductible contribution in your name
to the Scholarship Fund, the Design Experience Fund, the Research
and Development Fund or the National Design Center Fund.
For more information, check our website or call Deb Aldrich
or Ric Grefé.
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About Communiqué
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Graphic Arts
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