AIGA Design Educators Community

The AIGA Design Educators Community (DEC) seeks to enhance the abilities of design educators and educational institutions to prepare future designers for excellence in design practice, design theory and design writing at the undergraduate and graduate levels while supporting the fundamental mission of AIGA.

Dialectic Journal

Dialectic Call for Submissions

The AIGA Design Educators Community peer-reviewed, scholarly journal is now accepting submissions across all eight of the subject matter categories within which it publishes research, scholarship, and criticism in and around design education and practice and their intersections.

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The Latest from DEC

Shift Virtual Summit

SHIFT{ed}, a Design Education Summit: Recordings Available

Last year the AIGA Design Educators Community organized the SHIFT Summer Summit to explore the ways educators were shifting within and amidst the chaos of 2020, pivoting and changing course even while the world was rapidly changing around us. The DEC wants to return to these themes exactly one year later to find out how we have SHIFT{ed}, if we are still SHIFT{ing}, and the ways we must continue to SHIFT. Now that we have all had the chance to gain some perspective, with new methods and tools in place to tackle our teaching, research, and community engagement, we can come together and learn from each other once more.

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Beyond the Bauhaus

Beyond the Bauhaus: The Gee’s Bend Quilters

Since the early part of the 1900s, the women of Gee’s Bend, Alabama have narrated and re-written their lives through the creation of quilts. Gee’s Bend (also known as Boykin) is a small, rural, predominantly African-American community in Wilcox County, Alabama. The town, which sits enclosed on three sides by the Alabama River, takes its name from a plantation owner named Joseph Gee, who settled the town and built his cotton plantation on the land in the early 1800s. With him, he brought a group of eighteen enslaved African Americans. Today, almost all of Gee’s Bend residents are descendants of formerly enslaved people from Gee’s plantation. 

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Design Teaching Resource

Design Teaching Resource

The AIGA Design Teaching Resource is a peer-populated platform for educators to share assignments, teaching materials, outcomes, and project reflections.

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More from the DEC

Dialogue

The ongoing series of fully open-access proceedings of the conferences and national symposia of the AIGA Design Educators Community.

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Dialogue proceedings book cover

Value Design Education Pledge

A set of working principles that serve as a foundation for enacting long-term, systemic change in design education and pedagogy.

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Value Design Education Pledge

Graduate Student Posters

Seven posters that address the topic of Bridging Digital and Physical Experiences, which is one of the trends defined in AIGA’s Design Futures.

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2020 Graduate Research Posters

Dialectic Journal

A scholarly journal of thought leadership, education, and practice in the discipline of visual communication design.

DEC Steering Committee

Jason Alejandro

Jason Alejandro

Victor Davila

Victor Davila

Ashley Hairston Doughty

Ashley Hairston Doughty

Lee-Sean Huang

Lee-Sean Huang

Katie Krcmarik

Katie Krcmarik

Meena Khalili

Co-Chair

Meena Khalili

Lisa Mercer

Lisa Mercer

Ali Place

Ali Place

Alberto Rigau

Co-Chair

Alberto Rigau

Kaleena Sales

Kaleena Sales

Kyuha Shim

Kyuha Shim

Rebecca Tegtmeyer

Rebecca Tegtmeyer

Natalie Tyree

Natalie Tyree

Liese Zahabi

Liese Zahabi

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Joining a dynamic community of educators, mentors, influential designers, and more

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