Monthly news and updates for AIGA members
October/November 2002
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Contents
News and information
Participate in national board nominations
“Gain” conference a great success
AIGA board adopts new strategic direction
Lucille Tenazas honored with National Design Award
Student e-newsletter launched
365: AIGA Year in Design 22—the perfect gift
www.aiga.org
AIGA Designer Directory—www.aiga.org/directory
AIGA online calendar shows what’s happening across the
country
AIGA Design Forum heats up
Advocacy
Election reform legislation passes
AIGA co-publishes National Security Strategy with Winterhouse
AIGA committed to developing universal design standards
Coming soon
“Grow: AIGA Professional Development Seminar Series”
Resources
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News and information
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Participate in national board nominations
The nominating process for national board members has been refined by
committee chair Joseph Michael Essex. The process invites nominations
from all members and allows for self-nomination, although it also requires
a more extensive application process to assure that the committee has
the same information on all candidates, recognizes the work nominees have
done at the chapter level, and reveals the level of commitment of the
nominees. The committee consists of members who are not on the board to
make sure member interests are served by the board. To
nominate, visit www.aiga.org/nominationsprocess. Nominations are due
December 31.
“Gain”
conference a great success
“Gain: AIGA National Business and Design Conference” was held
in Minneapolis October 25–27, focusing on “Beyond branding.”
It turned out to be a stimulating, thoughtful, provocative and informative
experience for more than 400 designers and their clients. The addition
of business leaders to our regular audience of designers resulted in a
new chemistry; the opportunity for designers to discuss the implications
of the presentations with their own clients offered new insights for both.
In every way, the conference exceeded our expectations. David Brancaccio was incisive, humorous and engaging in his moderating case studies, team presentations, monologues and audience and participation. For a full list of speakers, visit gain.aiga.org.
The conference represented an inflection point in AIGA’s strategy to move toward representing the designing process, rather than designers. This strategic redirection—the subject of the keynote presentation by Keith Yamashita of Stone Yamashita Partners—involves communicating more clearly how the design process and designers’ thinking adds to clients’ bottom line and effectiveness.
“Gain”, the conference, focused on process, collaboration and, in an interesting outcome, values (which is different from value). A number of the speakers highlighted the importance of design in communicating the values of a client and the critical need for clients to understand the broader business environment—the triple bottom line (financial, cultural, environmental).
The “Gain” conference is simply the beginning of a discussion that will be carried on in Gain, our online publication, which features case studies and interviews. Case studies that describe or quantify the contribution of design will become one of AIGA’s highest priorities, as designers of all stripes urge us to become a source of material they can use in demonstrating the value of design. These will be published in Gain and on a new area of our website that will be launched by the first of the year.
AIGA’s national design conference in Vancouver next October will pick up the momentum created toward defining the full potential of design’s impact in the economy, culture and the environment. Be sure to register for “Shifting Perspectives: AIGA National Design Conference” early to ensure a deeply discounted registration fee and a chance to participate in a conference that will provide a clear direction for the profession through the next decade.
AIGA board adopts new strategic direction
At its fall meeting, the AIGA national board ratified a new direction
for the organization. AIGA’s highest priority will be to communicate the
value of designing—as a way of problem solving—to the business community.
A board committee will recommend a comprehensive campaign to launch the
new direction in January—including its implications for governance, education,
alliances and promotion. Watch for a small publication designed to communicate
the new direction to our members (to be distributed in January); our new
strategy; a version of the message that will be designed for you to give
to your clients, describing a broader role for designers; and the publication
of case studies that document the value added by design.
A major effort following up on this recalibration of our course will be the collection and publication of both case studies and ROI metrics, all in standardized formats.
Lucille Tenazas honored with National Design
Award
Former AIGA national president Lucille Tenazas was honored with the National
Design Award in communication design in a ceremony at the Cooper-Hewitt
National Design Museum last month. Lucille is a designer, teacher and
an inspiration to many.
As an honoree, she joins AIGA national board member John Maeda, who received it last year. Since the award has been given, eight of the eleven finalists have been active leaders within AIGA.
Student e-newsletter launched
In September, AIGA launched a new e-newsletter, AIGA Transitions,
created for student members to address topics in navigating the transition
from school to work.
The editors for AIGA Transitions are AIGA national board members Petrula Vrontikis (principal of Vrontikis Design Office in Los Angeles and an educator at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California) and Terry Irwin (a founder of MetaDesign in San Francisco and an educator at California College of Arts and Crafts in San Francisco).
The October issue addressed developing a portfolio that demonstrates the way you think and the quality of your technical work. Wherever students are in their studies, it is important, assignment by assignment, to think of how their work will complement other examples in their portfolios. It is never too early nor too late to consider this subject.
Transitions is archived on the AIGA website at www.aiga.org/transitionsarchive. A teaser page is available to nonmembers, but the full newsletter is available to members only. Any AIGA member may subscribe to the newsletter by updating his or her profile.
365: AIGA Year in Design 22—the perfect gift
Agonizing over the ideal gift for a favorite colleague or client? Enlightenment
is at hand. Buy 365: AIGA Year in Design 22. Top designers recommend
it.
With more than 1,000 color photographs of the winning design solutions, selected by 13 specialized juries, 365: AIGA Year in Design 22 is the authoritative chronicle of design for the year 2001.
Essays written by prominent design critics and charts that provide insight into the designers’ working process situate the winning work in a contextual framework. Extensive design and production credits, project statements and quotes from the competition jurors further elucidate featured pieces. In addition, AIGA’s 2003 medalists—Samuel Antupit and Paula Scher—are profiled in insightful biographical essays and retrospective portfolios.
Conceived by AIGA in conjunction with Chicago-based design group studio blue, 365: AIGA Year in Design 22 is a truly stunning record of a year’s design activity in the U.S. As the not wholly unbiased Stefan Sagmeister comments, “The new AIGA annual is in my opinion the smartest annual in years.”
AIGA member price: $40. Buy it!
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www.aiga.org
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AIGA Designer Directory—www.aiga.org/directory
Is your listing in the Designer Directory accurate? Make sure colleagues
and potential clients can find you by updating
your profile.
About one in ten professional and associate members have indicated their areas of interest in their profile. Only by completing your profile does the Designer Directory become a useful resource for the public in finding a designer to take on a new project. We are particularly interested in having all professionals who teach full time or part time indicate their status in their profiles so we can work with you to improve design education.
AIGA has recently taken additional steps to limit the ability of groups to harvest e-mail addresses from the online directory. In addition to featuring the conditions of use more prominently, we’ve instituted a java script that prevents companies from extracting e-mail addresses from our site. We will pursue violations of the conditions of use, so if you suspect someone of improper use, please let us know.
AIGA online calendar shows what’s happening
across the country
Your single source for information on AIGA events and activities
is the calendar on the national site, www.aiga.org/calendar The calendar
is designed so that you can see all events scheduled for a particular
date range or you can select just those events related to a particular
chapter.
AIGA Design Forum heats up
The “passionate” new typography forum has provoked
quite a bit of discussion since its launch in mid-October. More than 35
readers responded to moderator Allan Haley’s article, “They’re
not fonts.” One young reviewer said, “The article was cool.
The reactions are better. I learned to differentiate between a typeface
and a font.”
Members of the Cross-cultural design forum might call it a cultural difference. However, they were not immune to conflict either. Ronnie Lipton showed the pitfalls of designing across cultures and how, in Japan, a “Flopped Flap Causes Flap.”
The Information Design forum discussion started out with bad directions and ended up with information anxiety, but then, as Erik Spiekermann pointed out, “Who doesn’t suffer from it?”
Elsewhere, some professionals were practicing their patience with clients who want refunds for work done 2.5 years ago while others continued to struggle with the classic dilemma: Grub or ethics?
In the Illustration forum, Dugald Stermer provided a vivid example of the dangers of cocktail parties: “A young woman asked what I “did,” meaning, I assumed, for a living. When I answered, “I’m an illustrator,” she looked at me blankly for a couple of seconds, then brightened and said, “Children’s books.”
Check out these discussions and others at http://designforum.aiga.org
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Advocacy
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Election reform legislation passes
The legislation on election reform—including recommendations
on the involvement of professional designers in ballot design—was
signed by President Bush at the end of October. We are waiting for committee
reports to see if our specific language was included.
AIGA’s Design for Democracy campaign, including both the Chicago voting experience redesign initiative and national efforts, were featured on CNN in a political program on October 31 and again on Election Day.
AIGA co-publishes National Security Strategy
with Winterhouse
Over the past several years, AIGA has sought selective opportunities to
demonstrate that the design profession is a critical player in communicating
and clarifying complex issues in the public sector as well as the broader
economy. This can take the form of issues like ballot design or simply
publishing critical papers in a very straightforward design.
President Bush recently released a new National Security Strategy, as mandated by Congress. Although the strategy has been discussed in the press, it has not been published. AIGA teamed with Bill Drenttel of Winterhouse Editions to bring out a nonpartisan small print edition as a means of encouraging public discourse on the 14,000-word policy statement. Copies will be sent to all Senators and to a variety of opinion leaders as a means of highlighting the role designers can play in communicating issues. Future editions in this series may include other nonpartisan policy statements such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. A limited number of complimentary copies are available from publications@aiga.org; additional copies can be obtained directly from www.winterhouse.com for $5.
AIGA committed to developing universal design
standards
AIGA has committed to take the lead within the profession on developing
universal design standards for the web. This position is consistent with
AIGA’s role as a standard bearer and an authority. Further, it is consistent
with pursuing principles of making information accessible to all Americans,
regardless of their skills or knowledge. Designing Democracy, our campaign
for improved information design in government, pursues this goal. Recent
work with the FDA to improve the effectiveness of patient inserts is also
part of this campaign. And now, AIGA will work from the accomplishments
of the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative to share with designers the requirements
for content accessibility in web design projects and to capture designers’
recommendations on the formulation of standards. This will occur next
year.
In a conference on accessible web design that was developed by Adaptive
Environments and RISD, AIGA committed to taking the lead within the profession
on developing universal design standards for web accessibility. AIGA must
continue to set the standards for design, just as it did decades ago with
the symbol signs project.
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Coming soon
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“Grow: AIGA Professional Practice
Seminar Series”
AIGA, in partnership with chapters across the U.S., has hosted
a series of “Grow” seminars with David C. Baker from ReCourses,
Inc. over the past year. There are still a few seats left is the last
set of sessions, to be held December 6–7 in New York City. Each
half-day session—specifically tailored for design managers, studio
principals, senior designers, art directors and business development people—will
be four hours long and will feature topics to help grow your design business
responsibly.
Topics include: “Taking Care of Clients; Positioning and Marketing Your Services”; “Being a Good Manager”; and “Monitoring and Benchmarking Your Practice.” Attendance is limited to just 40 attendees per session.
For more information and to register, visit www.aiga.org/grow.
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Resources
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Want to renew? www.aiga.org/renew
Want to register for “Shifting Perspectives: National Design Conference”? www.aiga.org/design_conference_2003
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
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About Communiqué
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Graphic Arts
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about design
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