AIGA Communique - March 2003

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	Monthly news and updates for AIGA members March 2003 -------------------------------------------------------------- Contents News and information Online balloting for new board open until April 30 2003 recipients of prestigious AIGA Medal are announced The relevance of design today The power of Design, or dD AIGA: stimulating thinking about design Truth in numbers: how many new designers each year? Ethics brochures define professional responsibilities Educators survey geared toward conference programming www.aiga.org AIGA’s 2002 audited financial statement available online Advocacy Design for Democracy, an AIGA strategic initiative Coming soon AIGA Austin presents “Design Ranch Cinco” “DUX2003: Designing for User Experiences Conference” AIGA Philadelphia’s “ONE” conference Resources --------------------------------------------------------------- News and information --------------------------------------------------------------- Online balloting for new board open until April 30 Following solicitation of nominations from all members, chapter leadership and design opinion leaders, this year’s nominating committee, chaired by Joseph Michael Essex (Essex Two, Chicago), has recommended the following slate of nominees for 5 of the 15 seats on the national board, effective July 1, 2002 for 3 years. The proposed slate: Frank Baseman, Philadelphia University, Philadelphia Jim Faris, Design Hat, Santa Cruz Doug Powell, Schwartz Powell Design, Minneapolis Lance Rutter, Tanagram, Chicago Michael Vanderbyl, Vanderbyl Design, San Francisco, as president All professional members should vote online by April 30, 2003. Biographical information on each candidate is available on our website. The proposed slate would replace the following incumbents, who will complete their terms in June: John Chuang, Aquent, Boston Bill Grant, Grant Design Collaborative, Atlanta Clement Mok, San Francisco Sam Shelton, KINETIK Communication Graphics, Washington, D.C. Petrula Vrontikis, Vrontikis Design Office, Los Angeles Current members of the national board continuing their service include: Dana Arnett, VSA Partners, Chicago John Bielenberg, Camden, Maine Terry Irwin, San Francisco John Maeda, MIT Media Lab, Cambridge Stefan Sagmeister, Sagmeister, Inc., New York Terry Swack, Boston Gong Szeto, Brooklyn Ann Willoughby, Willoughby Design Group, Kansas City Margaret Youngblood, Landor Associates, San Francisco The nominating committee is made up of rank-and-file AIGA members, not AIGA board members, to assure that the nominees reflect a broad view of members’ interests. The 2003 nominating committee was comprised of: Joseph Michael Essex, Essex Two, Chicago (chair) David Brown, former AIGA president, Los Angeles Meredith Davis, North Carolina State University, Raleigh Stephen Hartman, Creativille, St. Louis Marcia Lausen, Studio/lab, Chicago Christopher Liechty, Meyer & Liechty, Salt Lake City The proposed candidates were selected after a rigorous review of nominees against a variety of criteria, including the nature of their practice, the area of the country they represent, their previous contributions to AIGA and the priorities the board has adopted for new initiatives. The committee was developed to include representatives from various geographic areas, chapter sizes, local and national leadership experience, education and practice size. All of the committee members are aware, from personal experience, the level of commitment that is necessary for a successful board member. The committee received a strong pool of qualified candidates who were willing to serve, from which this group was selected. All have been actively involved in AIGA at the local or national level and represent role models in their disciplines for their professionalism, commitment and design achievements. 2003 recipients of prestigious AIGA Medal are announced B. Martin Pederson and Woody Pirtle have been awarded the coveted AIGA Medal for 2003. AIGA will present the medals this October at its national design conference in Vancouver. Considered the most prestigious award in the graphic design community, the AIGA Medal recognizes individuals for their distinguished achievements, services or other contributions to the field of graphic design and visual communication. These contributions may be made either through the practice of graphic design, teaching, writing or leadership in the profession. B. Martin Pederson, recipient of more than 300 design awards, has had a career that encompasses advertising, publication design, corporate design and publishing. Previously a design director of American Way, the first airline magazine, and Nautical Quarterly, producer of outstanding work for such clients as IBM and Ciba-Geigy, and a partner in the award-winning design firm Jonson Pedersen Hinrichs & Shakery, Marty succeeded the distinguished editor Walter Herdeg when he bought Graphis in 1986. His expanded global coverage of the design professions for more than a decade continues to celebrate all things creative. Woody Pirtle, before joining Pentagram as a principal in 1988, practiced at The Richards Group and then ran his own highly successful Dallas-based practice for 10 years. In the ‘70s and early ‘80s, his work fused European Modernism and Pushpin eclecticism to create a new brand of American design that combined simple elegance with searing wit. Texas design is still heavily influenced by Woody’s legacy, his logos, posters, environmental graphics and corporate communications, and he remains, arguably, the inspiration for an entire generation of American designers born, bred and practicing design in the South, the Southwest and the Midwest. The relevance of design today Today, none of us can avoid a sense of the truly significant issues facing the nation and the world. Many designers feel helpless as citizens, let alone as professionals, and are asking themselves about the relevance of design—their chosen profession—in contributing to solutions to the major issues facing society and the economy. Daily, the news raises the issues: How will investors regain enough confidence in corporate governance and reporting to kindle an economic rebound? How can we avoid the kinds of terrible misunderstandings that exist between different cultures and inspire terrorism or the failure of longtime alliances? How can business and society be responsible in its use of the world’s resources? Design does play an important role in the solutions to each of these challenges. Come to “The Power of Design: AIGA National Design Conference” and refresh your inspiration, surround yourself with like-minded people, friends old and new, and explore the relevance of design. AIGA has reduced the early conference rate to the lowest in years in order to make the conference accessible to as many designers as possible. The content of the conference will help you to make a real difference in the years ahead, contributing to solutions in the market economy, our culture and the environment. Your involvement in these solutions will reinforce the relevance of design in precisely the areas that will dominate the attention of society and business. Increasing respect and understanding of design will come from being important to others in their agenda, not ours. Please attend the conference, because it will be a chance to develop your own sense of direction for the coming decades, based on opportunities, shifting perspectives and sheer inspiration. The power of Design, or dD The identity for “The Power of Design” conference is one that you will see long after this fall’s gathering is over. AIGA conferences are not simply events; they are exclamations of content and stimulation in longer campaigns on important messages and themes. Thus, the October conference in Vancouver is a way to launch a sustained campaign on the relevance of design to society and business. The “power of Design,” with its idiosyncratic capitalization, refers to the power of taking design—with a lower case “d”—and raising it to a higher level—with a superscripted, initial upper case “D”—as a statement of changes that have occurred in the profession. Designers have moved beyond the creation of simple artifacts to advising clients on their communication strategy and product development; involving many disciplines; and acquiring a role based on a way of thinking. AIGA launched this concept in February by sending each member the Why brochure and Strategy-at-a-Glance. “The Power of Design” conference will reinforce this perspective and also introduce a hard look at a related issue: the role of design in addressing the really big issues facing society. AIGA wants to communicate the power of Design to others. Clients must understand that designers should be involved in many more aspects of problem definition and solution than occurs when designers are asked to create artifacts that communicate messages created by others. Society and business must understand how important design’s role can be in addressing the issues of the economy, society and the environment. You may have understood these truths long ago, yet there will be an advantage in our all gaining a common voice in articulating them so that design, designers and the design economy gain even greater strength in the decades ahead. These are critical stories to tell on the arc of the profession’s growth to a position of respect and success. As AIGA continues to advocate these messages in the years ahead, the “power of Design” identity will emerge on a variety of strategic initiatives. For more information, as well as to download copies of the Why booklet as a PDF, point your browser to www.aiga.org/designing. AIGA: stimulating thinking about design AIGA’s tagline was developed three years ago as a result of a competitive analysis of the organization’s positioning. Based on member input about the role AIGA does and should play in the design community, we developed a description of AIGA as a source of inspiration for designers, a provocateur of ideas for the profession and an advocate for greater understanding of design within the public and business communities. “Stimulating thinking about design” reinforced a perception of creating original content and provocation through competitions, exhibitions, publications, website and conferences; it also reflected a commitment to stimulating thinking about the value of design within the business community. AIGA has recently registered this tagline as a service mark and will begin to use it more frequently with the AIGA logotype, as a descriptor of who we are; we will simultaneously reduce the use of the longer historic name American Institute of Graphic Arts. We are not changing the name, but we are trying to minimize the misunderstanding that can be associated with the use of the descriptor “graphic arts.” “AIGA” has also been trademarked. Some members feel that if we reduce the use of the longer name, they will face questions of “what does AIGA stand for” and will feel compelled to give the longer name. When we are asked that, we do not explain the acronym; we give the answer we normally have to give even after saying “American Institute of Graphic Arts”: AIGA is the oldest and largest professional association of designers. Truth in numbers: how many new designers each year? Right now, designers far outnumber design jobs. Yet even in the recent boom years, we would consistently hear one statistic that was always exaggerated as a measure of the plight of the profession: the number of new students thought to be joining the design workforce each year. The number of graduates from 4-year programs has indeed grown over the past 15 years: there are 50 percent more students enrolled and 30 percent more graduates each year, but the number of graduates is not greater than the profession can absorb in periods of economic growth. According to the National Association of Schools of Art and Design (NASAD), the accrediting agency of which AIGA is a member, the number of students in B.F.A. programs in communications design, design, environmental design, graphic design and visual communications totaled 18,000 in 2002, with just under 3,500 graduating. We believe the size of the profession, without including the significant number of professionals working in interactive and digital design, numbers about 160,000 nationally. The number of graduates listed does not include community college graduates, whose number we cannot currently estimate. Ethics brochures define professional responsibilities The three new brochures in the highly regarded AIGA Design Business and Ethics series, “Sales Tax,” “Guide to Copyright” and “Use of Photography,” provide further guidance to client expectations for the profession. In total, seven brochures for designers are now available, in addition to a guide specifically for clients. Is your collection complete? Download PDFs of all of the brochures, from “Use of Fonts” to “Business and Ethical Expectations for Professional Designers,” from the AIGA website and continue to educate yourself and your clients. Members are encouraged to download and reformat brochures for use in their own marketing materials if it will help them in informing clients on appropriate business relationships with designers. The brochures were designed by Grant Design Collaborative in Atlanta. Several members expressed interest in the binding details for the books: ask your printer if they do loop stitching; loop stitching is saddle stitching with looped staples. If your printer doesn’t do it, they probably can send out for it or send you to someone who does it. The production of these booklets could not have been possible without the help of our sponsors: Aquent, official AIGA sponsor of professional development; SMART Papers; and BSA, the Business Software Alliance. Educators survey geared toward conference programming A survey specifically geared towards design educators is currently on the AIGA website. It is designed to help the AIGA Design Education community prepare for special programming at “The Power of Design” conference this fall. If you are an educator, full- or part-time, please complete the survey so that the educational community can come together in Vancouver in a productive and beneficial way. While you’re online, make sure you update your profile to indicate your status as an educator. That will allow us to target additional communications to you more effectively. --------------------------------------------------------------- www.aiga.org --------------------------------------------------------------- AIGA’s 2002 audited financial statement available online AIGA’s audited financial statement has been published for the first time on its website. The board and management of AIGA consider their roles to be stewards of the institution, which belongs to members past, present and future. The audited statement is published as a commitment to transparency and accountability in governance. The statement is prepared by an independent auditor, O’Connor Davies Munn and Dobbins, who has audited AIGA’s books of account since 1994. A competitive review of auditors was held in 1998 and the decision was made to continue to retain ODMD. Periodic reviews will occur to assure continuing objectivity on the part of the auditors, who report to the secretary/treasurer of the corporation as chairman of the finance committee of the board. The statement is available as a PDF, annotated by AIGA’s current secretary/treasurer, Sam Shelton, to help those not as familiar with accounting and financial statements to understand some of the basic assumptions. --------------------------------------------------------------- Advocacy --------------------------------------------------------------- Design for Democracy, an AIGA strategic initiative Design for Democracy is the highly successful multidisciplinary team in Chicago that was successful in providing guidance to Cook County, Illinois (the infamous election nexus featured so prominently in previous books on the making of the president) on redesigning their ballots. The Cook County initiative grew out of attention brought to AIGA by the “Get Out the Vote” campaign, in which AIGA worked through chapters across the country to commission 23,000 posters by 23 designers to encourage voter turnout. With the indefatigable energy of Bob Zeni, Design for Democracy became a nonprofit, with the design team of professionals and students led by Marcia Lausen, AIGA Chicago chapter president and complemented by professionals in user research, industrial design, human factors, etc. Recently Design for Democracy was provided grant support by the state of Oregon to redesign its election materials, the most innovative in the country since the entire Oregon population votes by mail. In February, Marcia Lausen, Ric Grefé and the student team who undertook research and design, presented recommendations to all of the Oregon county clerks as well as the secretary of state. It appears the recommendations are being adopted (piecemeal, of course). The secretary of state also arranged for Design for Democracy to present issues of ballot design to a conference of all 50 secretaries of state in Portland, Maine in June. At a meeting of the board of Design for Democracy this month, it was decided to transfer governance authority for the enterprise to AIGA as a national AIGA strategic initiative, since the opportunities for Design for Democracy were expanding nationally and AIGA has the infrastructure in place to support it. This is an exciting example of how AIGA can indeed be the central place within the design community, using its limited resources to support, nurture and expand volunteer initiatives developed around the country. --------------------------------------------------------------- Coming soon --------------------------------------------------------------- AIGA Austin presents “Design Ranch Cinco” Put your 2D tools out to pasture and join AIGA Austin at the fifth annual “Design Ranch,” April 10–13, 2003. At this three-day design conference in the beautiful Texas hill country, participants will experience hands-on workshops, intimate speaker presentations, fine dining, fresh air and a healthy dose of Texas hospitality. Speakers include: Margo Chase, Chase Design Group, Los Angeles; Peter Girardi, Funny Garbage, New York; Alicia Johnson, Johnson + Wolverton, Portland; Terry Marks, Terry Marks Design, Seattle; Ann Willoughby, Willoughby Design Group, Kansas City; and honorary emcee D.J. Stout, Pentagram, Austin. Additional activities may include bookbinding, printmaking, trail rides or tubing down the Guadalupe River. Plus, enjoy nightly live entertainment from some of Austin’s finest musicians. Attend Design Ranch and experience three exciting days of passion, discovery and inspiration for meeting the challenges we face in our profession. AIGA member rate includes conference registration and all meals. Lodging is additional. Visit the event site for more details, or contact Andrea Bond at designranch@aigaaustin.org. Click here to see the Flash preview. Space is limited, so register today! “DUX2003: Designing for User Experiences Conference” ACM SIGCHI, ACM SIGGRAPH and AIGA Experience Design are pleased and excited to offer an unprecedented joint conference. “DUX2003” will gather together designers of all kinds from our intersecting communities who deliver user-centered designs for the digital age. Sponsored by three premiere societies, the conference program showcases the interaction between digital design, business and users. The conference will take place at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco, California, June 5–7, 2003. In order to truly understand not only what a quality user experience is, but also what factors contribute to the creation of a success or a failure, this conference will look at all facets of the product/service development lifecycle and at other facets of a business as decisions are made that affect the user experience. The results of the conference will contribute to the growing body of knowledge in the AIGA Experience Design Case Study Archive and the ACM Digital Library. The conference program will feature prominent designers, business analysts, researchers and educators via presentations and discussions of design cases, design practice, design research, invited talks, invited panels and more. Additional information is available at www.dux2003.org. The “DUX2003” conference committee includes: Richard Anderson, Jonathan Arnowitz, Alan Chalmers, Peter Merholz, Shel Perkins, Terry Swack and John Zapolski. AIGA Philadelphia’s “ONE” conference AIGA Philadelphia and the School of Architecture & Design at Philadelphia University are sponsoring a landmark retreat on design sustainability on Thursday, March 27 (ONE evening) and Friday, March 28, 2003 (ONE day). The retreat will focus on issues, questions, dialogue and answers to encourage new ways of thinking, to educate designers in the concept of sustainability and to support our transition to sustainable practices. Your presence, your participation and your words will create the vision for a new paradigm in design. Join us for an eye-opening, controversial, innovative retreat. Listen. Participate. Share knowledge. Communicate. “ONE” guests are leaders in the field of design sustainability. “ONE” offers innovative thinking, creative speakers, dialogue and much more. Eat fabulous sustainable/organic cuisine. Take a yoga break. Walk in the peace and serenity of Fairmont Park. Graphic designers, educators and students will find this retreat useful to their professional, teaching/learning roles. This is the “ONE”! For detailed information, visit www.philadelphia.aiga.org/one. --------------------------------------------------------------- Resources --------------------------------------------------------------- Want to renew? www.aiga.org/renew Want to register for “The Power of Design: AIGA National Design Conference”? http://powerofdesign.aiga.org Have you had a recent change of address? Update your profile, including e-mail preferences and affiliation with communities of interest at www.aiga.org/profile. Want to know what’s going on? Check out local and national events at www.aiga.org/calendar. -------------------------------------------------------------- About Communiqué This newsletter is e-mailed monthly to AIGA members; past issues are archived on the AIGA website. To unsubscribe, update your profile or send an e-mail to communique@aiga.org with “unsubscribe” in the subject line. To review our privacy policy, go to www.aiga.org/privacy. -------------------------------------------------------------- AIGA \| American Institute of Graphic Arts 164 Fifth Avenue New York NY 10010 \| 212 807 1990 communique@aiga.org AIGA: stimulating thinking about design www.aiga.org