Events

Aspen Design Summit

The Aspen Design Summit is an interdisciplinary, global workshop of designers, NGO decision makers, corporate leaders, students and project leaders who work together to design solutions to projects that improve the quality of life. The projects are those that benefit real people without the means to address impediments to human dignity and achievement. The projects may benefit people directly or other living things on which human activity depends.

In April 2008, AIGA and Cumulus (International Association of Universities and Colleges of Art, Design and Media) will circulate a design brief for a project to increase public awareness of the challenges in providing universal access to clean water. AIGA has joined with Circle of Blue, a coalition of journalists and scientists who are concerned with this project, to launch a challenge for student involvement in developing means of raising awareness.

In August, the brief and the guidelines for an international competition will be distributed. Faculty will be asked to assign this brief for workshops during the fall term. Entries will be due In December; a jury will meet in January. From February to April, the selected finalists will develop their ideas further, for presentation to a gathering of designers, scientists, journalists, business people and NGO leaders in Aspen in May 2009  (the Aspen Design Summit). Forty students will then be invited to a collaborative workshop in Copenhagen for three weeks in August, with the results to  be presented at the World Summit on Climate Change in the fall.

The 2006 Aspen Design Summit was held from June 20-23.