Monthly news and updates for AIGA members
June 2001
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Contents
News and information
365: AIGA Year in Design provokes nationwide discussion
AIGA thanks outgoing national board members
www.aiga.org
This year's 365 selections announced
Post-conference materials available for "Verge"
Advocacy updates
AIGA initiates nationwide Design for Democracy campaign
Coming soon
Lend your "Voice" and register for AIGA National
Design
Conference
Opportunities to get involved
Sign up for your AIGA affinity card
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News and information
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365: AIGA Year in Design provokes nationwide discussion
365: AIGA Year in Review took a new form this
year, breaking away from the neutral background of its design
in the past. In a discussion area on the AIGA website, a number
of members criticized the book because its form compromised AIGA's
core principles: design is intended to make communication clear;
type should be legible, in scale and form; design should be shown
in context; and the integrity of authorship should be preserved.
We are sorry if, in publishing 365, we appear to have abandoned critical principles we argue for every day or if the book felt like a betrayal of trust to any member. This was not the intent. The intent was to draw attention to the elements of detail that designers tend to cherish and to utilize an award-winning designer to create an artifact of the book. We are planning an account of the controversy, including excerpts from the comments we received, in a future issue of Trace.
Next year's book will be organized around individual competition categories (such as information design, environmental graphics, etc.), with anywhere from five to fifteen selections in each category. Acknowledging all the reactions we've received to 365, we remain committed to exploring how the form-and content-of our design annual should evolve as we go forward.
The designer for next year's edition of 365 has been selected: Cheryl Towler Weese of studioblue in Chicago. Cheryl is a talented book designer who has contributed to past AIGA competitions as a juror and as the designer of this year's "50 Books/50 Covers" exhibit at AIGA's National Design Center. She has been following the controversies surrounding this year's edition of 365 with interest, to say the least.
Let us know what you think would make 365 valuable as a document as well as a design artifact. What should a design annual preserve? What's the best way to display work? How do we put that work in context? Should we include comments from designers? From jurors? From outside design journalists?
Please share your input with us and with your fellow designers. We promise that it will make AIGA a better client for Cheryl and 365 a more effective record of the best of our work.
Professional members with active memberships during calendar year 2000 should have received the annual publication of the competitions' results by now. Associate, student and new members may order a copy of 365: AIGA Year in Design online.
AIGA thanks outgoing board members
AIGA is fortunate that each year, fifteen remarkably
dedicated and insightful members commit the time to lead the
institution. The national board is not an honorific recognition;
it is a time-consuming responsibility that calls on each member
to take on special assignments.
This year, six members who have made lasting contributions are leaving the board.
Bart Crosby, Crosby Associates, Chicago was responsible for developing and helping us to implement the identity and branding system that is so critical to our positioning strategy. He has been a trusted advisor on finances, strategy and design and always there to help every staff member.
Eric Madsen, The Office of Eric Madsen, Minneapolis, has been a tireless fundraiser, a committed board member, a missionary in our efforts to build alliances with others in the book design world and has provided sustained leadership of AIGA's "50 Books/50 Covers" competition as we try to achieve its full potential.
Emily Oberman, Number Seventeen, New York, with her partner Bonnie Siegler, led AIGA's endeavor to find an exciting and meaningful place in stimulating thinking within the community of designers for film and television, creating and directing the DFTV conferences in 1999 and 2001.
Mary Scott, Academy of Art College, San Francisco, has represented the education and student members and has demonstrated a personal example in supporting AIGA and its potential.
Beth Singer, Beth Singer Design, Washington, DC, has served as secretary/treasurer, chair of the Finance Committee and, most importantly, as an indefatigable initiator of AIGA's sponsorship guidelines, fund-raising campaign strategy and Design Explorers, a project that will ultimately involve hundreds of designers mentoring youth and may change the life of thousands of the young, as they discover design.
Tom Suiter, former chief creative officer of marchFIRST, San Francisco, provided a seasoned and valuable perspective on the designer's role in the new economy and helped immeasurably in the infrastructure for AIGA's web presence.
We extend our heartfelt thanks to each.
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www.aiga.org
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This year's 365 selections announced
365: AIGA Annual Design Competitions
After careful and considered review, a jury chaired by Michael
Bierut (Pentagram Design, New York) selected a group of entries
as outstanding examples of design communications produced in
2000. The list
of the jury's selections is available on the AIGA website;
images of the selections will be added this summer. The selections
will be mounted as a public exhibition scheduled to open at the
AIGA National Design Center in New York in October 2001. The
show will travel nationally to selected sites and will be documented
in next year's 365: AIGA Year in Design, AIGA's annual
design compendium.
50 Books/50 Covers
Eric Madsen chaired the jury selecting this year's 50 Books/50
Covers, which will also be documented in next year's 365:
AIGA Year in Design. This year's 50 Books/50 Covers (listed
on AIGA's website) will be exhibited in August and September
2001 in AIGA's Fifth Avenue gallery, as well as at "Voice:
AIGA National Design Conference" in Washington, D.C.
Post-conference materials available
for "Verge: AIGA Seminar on Experience Design"
AIGA held its first seminar on Experience Design in
March 2001. Materials from the conference are now posted in the
past conferences section of www.aiga.org. You'll find moderator
Brenda Laurel's opening remarks, bios and short descriptions
of presentations by speakers Vernor Vinge, Rodney Smith, Ryan
Oakes, Dj Spooky a.k.a Paul Miller, Scott Ault, Debbie Bonnanzio,
Dale Mason and Ralph Appelbaum for you to print out and read
at your leisure.
The "Verge" seminar was developed specifically for AIGA's community of interest-AIGA Experience Design. You can join the group's discussion by visiting http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aiga-advance
Read the edited seminar highlights
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Advocacy updates
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Members have been clear in the priority they place on
having AIGA educate business and the public about the value of
design. The media continues to focus on industrial and product
design and it has been difficult, even with costly public relations
assistance, to gain traction on that slope.
AIGA has remodeled its public awareness efforts to take advantage of the highly publicized communication design problem of the last election to make points about the value of design in the public sector; to use the federal government, eventually, as a better model for the private sector; and to co-opt the attention paid to other forms of design in order to gain credibility for our own messages.
During the summer, AIGA will set up a comprehensive advocacy section on www.aiga.org to assist members in keeping current on initiatives and in participating.
AIGA initiates nationwide Design
for Democracy campaign
AIGA has been making exploratory visits in Washington
and on Capitol Hill over improved federal information design.
We are arguing that a democracy cannot include all its citizens
in the process of governing unless the government and its citizens
can communicate clearly with each other and that this is a process
best accomplished by communication designers.
We are seeking an explicit commitment to using professional graphic designers to study and propose alternatives, and to redesign the information instruments for election reform, tax reform, Social Security reform, Medicare reform, immigration reform and any revisions to the Census. We are also seeking the convening of the first Federal Design Assembly in thirty years.
Already, we have gained support from staff members on both sides of the aisle in both houses. The Federal Election Commission is discussing with us the writing of guidebooks for local election officials on voting design. An AIGA Voting Design Taskforce has been created to address this issue. We have provided expert witnesses to the Bilateral Commission on Election Reform and the National Association of Secretaries of States conferences or hearings.
Our positions are framed in the terms of communication design and experience design, including industrial and product design. This strengthens our role in public policy arenas, as the leading spokesperson for the design profession. If we can gain this credibility, it will allow us new authority in statements we want to make about communication and information design.
At the AIGA Leadership Retreat, we will launch the training for a national grassroots campaign to support this political advocacy effort, through local, state and national levels. A watershed opportunity will occur on Wednesday, September 26, following "Voice, AIGA National Design Conference," for advocacy teams to meet with their legislators on a day we will declare as Design for Democracy Day.
In a test case for a local campaign, Ric Grefé has been developing targeted support from the Connecticut delegation. He has earned the support of Senator Christopher Dodd's staff on what will probably become the lead election reform legislation in the Senate; he will be meeting with Senator Joe Lieberman's office and Representative Chris Shay the week of July 2. He has already met with the Connecticut Secretary of State and Senate Majority Leader. As Senator Dodd's committee holds public hearings around the country, we will try to arrange AIGA witnesses on design.
Watch for the role you can play in giving our profession a Voice.
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Coming soon
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Lend your "Voice" and register for AIGA National
Design Conference
"Voice: AIGA National Design Conference"
takes place September 23-26, 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 70 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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Sign up for your AIGA affinity card
The second direct mail campaign for the AIGA affinity
credit card program is scheduled to mail to AIGA members on June
22. Our partner, MBNA, will follow-up this mailing with a telemarketing
campaign that will begin in mid-July.
MBNA has exclusive, approved access to AIGA's membership list for this program only. Consistent with AIGA policy, the membership list has not been sold or traded to MBNA for its unrestricted use.
Since AIGA often has access to design studio or business phone numbers only, many of the telemarketing calls will be made to these locations. If there is any problem with taking the call at the office, please don't hesitate to ask MBNA to remove your name from the call list.
We want to encourage members to use the card so that the AIGA logo gains visibility as it is handed across the counter in establishments across the country. To get the card, call 800 847 7378 and mention priority code AESS.
Please forward any questions or concerns to Deb Aldrich.
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