Note: This is in response to “Letter from AIGA’s incoming president” from AIGA National
http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/letter-from-aigas-incoming-president
Firstly, Don’t get me wrong. I have had some great times working and planning events with the AIGA. The Boston crowd is a great one. I was a student member for two years, and then I lapsed my membership when the dues went up. Typical story.
After reading the letter from newly elected AIGA President Debbie Millman, I was both relieved, and well, let-down. The buzz words were there that enticed me to read on (facebook, connection, transparency etc..). But when I got to the end of the letter, I noticed a few things that jarred me. Here are my comments on each section of the new AIGA initiative:
The Connectivity Initiative
This initiative boasts that “a revolution” is happening! Quick! Gather your vintage, socially active posters, and unite!! – Well, when I think of the typical AIGA fashion sometimes that is my first thought. But really, if you are a working designer right now, this is not news to you. You probably found this post by checking your Facebook or Twitter. There is a new communication structure in the works that is to be “progressive, authentic and meaningful”. I am hoping at least that what ever it is, can be proven to be effective for jobs, and useful before people buy in. There is no more “trust me” source any more in this Twitter environment we live in.
The Inclusivity Initiative
You can imagine our understanding of Debbie’s point about multi-disciplined designers feeling out of sorts with the AIGA. For a while there, we here at Dirk+Weiss felt that way. But however, only recently, have our view points changed about this topic. I feel, at least in the Boston chapter, that the need to embrace all viewpoints of design has come from a dwindling membership and the need to be unique in a print-less environment. It is great to see that AIGA National has started its 21st century emergence (even if it is nine years later), but I get the feeling that its still, just too slow of a process, and there is a lot of catching up to do (and fast).
Also, I have had a long standing gripe with AIGA’s perspective of students or recent graduates. Students are commonly overlooked by AIGA as real designers. But in reality, students are the future of this profession. They will be in the next wave of industry trends. Even in Deb’s letter, there is a feeling of catering to the thirty and over crowd. Just because someone has recently graduated, or is about to, does not make them a less valuable member of the design community.
Let’s see some student board members!
In the 20th century method, junior designers became senior designers after having much “experience”. Well, experience never hurt anyone in any field, but the playing field has changed remember. In the 21st century method, that same junior designer has probably been laid off, and is now creating a web based company, and some sort of viral mechanism to promote their venture. Why? How?! It’s simple. There are tools out on the web that allow almost anyone to do this and enable it to be seen by the world.
AIGA needs to become one of those tools. A viral, job-getting mechanism. This means they need to pull the trigger on more situations. I have noticed in my dealings with AIGA, that pulling the trigger is rare sometimes.
Oh yeah, “Break down barriers by 2014″? again, too slow of a process. In today’s time management arena, six months is long term, and technology is king. Predicting and strategizing a whole nicely packaged plan for that long away is overly ambitious, I think, for AIGA, or any company/organization. The real solution here is to get the AIGA vehicle up to the speed of not only its members, but to non-designer folks, you know, your clients. Then, when at that speed, determine how far ahead to look and plan.
Advocate the AIGA Mandate
A new mandate is a great launching pad for new things. But, I had no idea there was an AIGA mandate before I read Deb’s letter.Hmm…
“As a result, we have adopted a bold new course for meeting our mission “to advance designing as a professional craft, strategic tool and vital cultural force.”
The official new mandate can be found here.
Still, I hear nothing about how AIGA would like to help get you jobs. Designers understand their ‘craft’ and ’strategy’. In this economy, AIGA needs to be more than an “Inspirational Resource”, and actually help promote designers to non-designers.
How about this for a new AIGA mission: “The goal of AIGA is to promote the value and effectiveness of designers to the world”.
We here at Dirk+Weiss are active participants with AIGA Boston (although not members). The trend it seems is now from the ground up, rather than the top down. I feel that chapters are becoming much more independent, and almost competitive, with each other. A great, and healthy point. We feel that progression is happening, and love seeing it happen. Even if it means pushing all the right (or wrong) buttons.
Overall, all comments aside, we would like to say good luck in your new endevaur, we’re rooting for you AIGA.
Join Dirk+Weiss and AIGA Boston at Pecha Kucha Night. July 22, 1009 @ 6:30pm. The goal of these events is to talk about ‘our’ design work, in a setting that is comfortable and not pretentious. Come support all the speakers and Dirk+Weiss at this open forum type event. Each speaker is given 6min and 40seconds to talk about what they do as a creative professional.
Our topic will include designing for now and the power of interconnecting design concepts with smart technology. For more information: http://www.pecha-kucha.org/cities/boston
What is Pecha Kutcha?
“Pecha Kucha (which is Japanese for the sound of conversation) has tapped into a demand for a forum in which creative work can be easily and informally shown, without having to rent a gallery or chat up a magazine editor. This is a† demand that seems to be global – as Pecha Kucha Night, without any pushing, has spread virally to over 100 cities across the world. Find a location and join the conversation.”
Every two years, the AIGA has it’s Best of New England design competition. If you have been following our updates (or love/hate Helvetica) you probably have seen our project Anyone Can Swiss. Well, we can now call Anyone Can Swiss “Award Winning”.
That’s right, Dirk+Weiss has won a Best of New England (BoNE) award for outstanding design. The BoNE awards only go out the best New England designers with ‘knock your socks off’ work. Admittedly, the website for Anyone Can Swiss is not your typical graphic design project, but somehow, it felt right at home inside a graphic design competition.
Overall, we feel the judges connected to the bigger picture, and maybe even had a little fun with the project. That’s exactly what we wanted. Anyone Can Swiss is not just a “Perfect Helvetica Poster Generator”, it is a social experiment for graphic designers. Sure it pushes a few buttons, and causes some to ask “is this a joke? or serious?”. That’s the whole idea: contemplation and discourse.
We would like to thank the AIGA BoNE Show Judges and AIGA Boston for taking the time consider Anyone Can Swiss as an award winning design project, and creating an opportunity for us here a Dirk+Weiss to promote what we do to the greater design community.
Now what? Well, check out our Anyone Can Swiss iPhone app. Why the iPhone? We ask simply, why just be on the web, when you can be on the web and mobile? And we feel it is a safe assumption that many of the 40,000,000 iPhone users in the US are indeed, graphic designers.
Over at Convince and Convert, owner Jason Baer expresses his wealth of knowledge of social media and the trends that apply. His theories apply greatly to what we do here at Dirk+Weiss, including viral online marketing and return on investment.
In this video, Jason is speaking about how people use the web now, and mentions some stats from an “internet usage” study that was released. Always great to see how Jasons knowledge aligns with our practice and usage of marketing across social networks.
Very interesting: “Is social media being used more for communication or entertainment or both?”
Above: Microsoft’s Surface Interface. Proprietary madness. Lets go open-source and make it available to everyone!
In typical Dirk+Weiss fashion, we are building an interface for this years 2009 AIGA BoNE Show. This kiosk combines projection and a touch input device, powered by a custom software interface.
The purpose of this kiosk is to showcase the website winners of this years Best of New England design competition. Our goal is to create an interface that is not only well designed, but extremely intuitive.
The next generation of software interface is well, interface-less. Menu’s are going away and being replaced by hand gestures and organic content design. Thanks to a generous donation from TechSuperpowers in Boston, we have access to a MacMini and other various components for hardware. Come by the show in June, to check it out!
AIGA BoNE Show 2009 Info >>
Go ahead, click around. This is our “Transparent Relaunch” of the Dirk+Weiss Brand. Countless times we have been asked, “what is it you do exactly?” The typical response you may hear is “we are a design and technology firm”.
And we still are, but different.
After some great brainstorming and critically mapping of our original business model, it became instantly clear that what we were doing for our clients was more than just design and programming, and was more in the Marketing arena. We were always trying to find what field exactly uses graphic design and technology combined. Our solution was to re-structure our business model and brand as a fully capable, creative marketing agency.
If you follow our blog, you know that we know, transparency is king. Just like our advice we give to our clients, we applied to Dirk+Weiss. The cases are real, the videos are real, results are quantifiable and we can help make you money. Enjoy.
This past Thursday there was another AIGA “meet and drink” event in Cambridge, MA. These events are great opportunities to network and see some fellow designer buds. I was anticipating this one to be no different than any of the other countless “AFTA’s” I have attended, but I must say, this time the word FREE was buzzing in the air.
Usually when I talk about free things, its mainly Open Source software or great places to learn technology for free. But in this case, free refers to “Freelance”. Out of all the people I talked to (about 12 in 2.5hrs), five have either quit their job or got laid off, and are starting to freelance and independent contract regularly. Of course, Freelancing is not free, you will get paid, but what a connection.
This trend is just one of the clear examples I can see, that proves that the web is still in an infant stage, and efficient technology drives design. Freelancing and independent contracting gigs are out there, lots of them. Business’ still need designers, just with no strings (salary, benefits, etc.) attached. What is a pension anyway?
I am excited to see that designers are getting themselves out there. By using social media and Open Source technology, plus some smart branding, you can make a business for yourself. Set up your website to give the user instant gratification; the faster the better.
In this economic climate, if you can deliver good, efficient design, companies will hire you. They just want to know that you can make it work.
This past Saturday, I attended the annual AIGA Student Portfolio Review at MassArt, Boston.
The event started with all the reviewers, corralled, anticipating and chit-chatting amongst each other about what they do and what they expect to see. As the doors opened, the sight of all the students, looking nice and nervous at the same time, was quite exhilarating. It reminded me of a time not to long ago, when I was on their side of the table.
As I went from person to person, looking at posters, books, and corporate stationery, I quickly realized that the most needed advice to the students, was that of the so-called “Big-Picture”. There were obvious signs that the students have diligently practiced their craft; typography was tight and craft was clean. So after seeing this, I began to tell the students to relax, and that I was not there to nit-pick about un-kerned 12 point type.
I was very interested in hearing what the plans were for these students post-graduation. Where would they take their design skills? A job? Graduate Program? Freelance?
Because of the economy, most students had no idea what was in store next. They did understand however, how important it is to create valuable connections not only to other designers, but companies as well.
I felt I was able to provide some insight to the value of creating connections, and some of the methods that connections can be made. The first buzz word to arise is “Facebook”, then “Twitter”, then the common phrase “I need a website, but don’t want to learn Dreamweaver.” When I here this, I smile politely, and recommend a more realistic approach that is content management based. I explain that HTML websites are OK at best, and then go on to explain the power and simplicity of systems like Wordpress and Indexhibit. Their eyes go wide.
One student in particular, I found was looking for the Big Picture talk. Michael Deal is a design student who loves information graphics and the Beatles.
He found in his design class, while working on an information graphics project, that lots of connections can be made withing a particular subject. He told me quite a few times, that he wished he had an entire class about this subject (information design).
We talked for quite some time about how he could apply his skills in design to not just posters of information, but to business models, products, and events. Probably the best conversation about design happening in the room.
These students at the MassArt Review seemed like fast paced, social network savvy individuals who seem satisfied with their schooling. I could see the wanting though, to take on not just design projects, but larger goals. Overall, a feeling I got from many of the students: “I can do graphic design…now what? How do I make an impact?”
I guess my last bit of advice here would be: Branch out, make connections to what ever can help you move forward. Remember, regular people are your clients, continually get to know the world they live in, and you will be fine.
Michael Deal - "Beatles Citing Beatles"
With headlines like “The New York Times Co. has threatened to shut the Boston Globe…”, and a stream of articles from The Huffington Post about the print media death watch: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tag/death-of-newspapers (A personal favorite is To Newspaper Moguls: You Blew It by Jeff Jarvis.), What can I say?
Google is not going away, aggregators are only going to get faster and more efficient / accessible. So the only advice to give is: Wake up and smell the ink-on-paper!”. Newspapers, you’ve had your time.
I wonder though, what is the solution for a medium that thrives on yesterdays news? There must be a solution to this! In a previous post, I talked about a theory for a new E-Paper device. Good idea, but the rate of closing newspapers is faster than the rate that the device could be distributed. Not to mention prototyping and research. A large E-paper device is just to satisfy the “ritual” of holding a newspaper as an object. Google has already proven that people will forgo the physical object if they can access more data faster. So is there a solution? Slim to none.
Our business is located in the heart of the Boston area. When we heard that the Boston Globe was given an ultimatum to find 20M, or face the reaper, it was an eye opener, but not un-expected. Boston is known for its twenty something college students. Sorry Boston Globe, in the life of a college town, Facebook and iPhones are king.
