Hello, hello, hello. A belated Happy New Year 2024 or
an early Welcome to the Year of the Dragon.
For all who celebrate, I'd like to do a quick solo episode to
give you an update and a preview of what we have in store for you
this year on the AIG Design Podcast and at AIG and more
broadly. For those of you who don't know
me, my name is Lee Shawn Huang, the Senior Director of Learning
and Programs here at a IGA. The theme for this year's
podcast and our programming more generally is margins.
I'll get more into what I mean by margins a little bit later
on, so stay tuned for that. As for the podcast, we are
committed to about one episode a month, at least eight episodes
for this year, with some surprises and special features
in between. One of the things we wanted to
do differently here at AIG this year is a return to more
webinars. If you've been with us for a
while, you'll remember back in 2020-2021 we were doing a ton of
webinars, sometimes multiple ones a week, and then when we
could do in person events again, we really scaled down our online
live programming and really focused on the in person
conferences, which have been great for those who've come out
to see us and gather with us in Seattle and in New York City.
Last year we sold out that New York City conference and I hope
to be able to announce more details about the 2024
conference very, very soon. So with more webinars throughout
the year, they'll be free live streamed online to help you with
support and ideas for your career and creative growth as a
designer. So be sure to follow us on at
AIGA Design on social media or subscribe to our e-mail list
with a link in the podcast show notes or in this post caption if
you're watching the video version of this AIG.
As competitions are live and we are getting submissions coming
in and it's great to see, entries are currently open for
both AIG as Fifty Books, 50 Covers and 365 AIGA Year in
Design, 50 Books, 50 Covers is celebrating its 100 year
anniversary this year, so we are super excited for that.
And 365 is back in its third year After relaunching this
classic competition this year. We are emphasizing the
competition not just as an opportunity to celebrate
excellent design, but as an opportunity to celebrate
impactful design and to create a historical snapshot of what
design was like in 2023. Stay tuned, we will be
announcing our jurors very soon and also a reminder that our
early submission deadline where you can submit at a discounted
price is February 26th, so the earlier you can get your stuff
in, the better. We look forward to seeing your
submissions, some other updates and changes here at a IGAI.
Want to talk about the AIGA Professional Design
Certification? 2024 marks our second official
year after our successful launch and pilot of the AIGA
Professional design Certification programs, the
professional Designer, the PD and the design leader DL tracks.
And we couldn't be more excited about the progress and
engagement we've seen so far. Almost 20 designers have earned
their full certifications with us, so we wanted to make things
easier and more accessible to designers who want to go through
the certification program first. We've introduced a flexible
learning path so participants no longer have to complete the
online learning modules to schedule their portfolio
reviews. You can do it in any order that
you would like. We believe that this just adds
more flexibility to cater to your learning preferences and to
your schedule. We've also made the portfolio
reviews fully online. Previously we were doing the
Professional Designer reviews online, but we were doing the
design leader portfolio reviews in person.
We now have automated scheduling for participants in the
certification program. We actually have a round of
interviews coming up later in February and then another round
in June and we'll announce some later dates for the second-half
of the year. And then finally, we have more
affordable AIGA design leader certification prices as well.
Since we've removed the in person elements from the price,
we've added in more online learning in the form of the
leading innovation certificate which is now bundled with that
certification. So I hope you will sign up and
go to aiga.org or click on the link in the show notes to learn
more about that certification, if you think that is for you.
As I mentioned before, we are almost ready to announce our
AIGA Design conference for 2024. We are still negotiating with
venues and other logistics and things like that, but stay
tuned. We are intending to do an event
in October. So finally circling back to the
theme of margins for this year. For both the conference and for
our podcast programming, there could be different ways of
interpreting the theme of margins.
The first one being competitive margins.
How do you stand out from the crowd?
How do you find an edge in the market?
As a designer, as a design team? As a design firm, we can also
look at innovation at the margins.
How do we center marginalized communities?
Focus on emergent practices, pushing boundaries, looking at
recently possible technologies and sustainable transitions.
The 3rd way to look at margins is margins of error.
What are some experiments, mistakes, and failures that
you've made over the years and how can we learn from them?
#4 is margins of victory. So this is about designing for
democracy, getting out the vote, which will be launching soon at
AIG as well, and mobilizing movements for change,
particularly important with the elections happening this year.
At the federal level, the 5th way of looking at margins is
profit margins. We want to look at
entrepreneurship, ways of measuring value, new business
models, as well as redefining what success even means.
Finally, scribble in the margins.
We want to see doodle sketches, commentary and critique about
design, or propose your own interpretations of the margins
theme. So these are just some initial
ideas to get you thinking of things to propose.
Maybe to come on to the podcast as a guest yourself, or to
propose something for the conference later this year or as
a webinar. Coming up on the podcast later
in February. Danny Spitzberg and Humphrey
Obobe, who are design researchers based in the San
Francisco Bay Area and they'll be talking to us about why
design research is stuck. So that's the update for the
podcast and for AIGA for the start of the year.
Look forward to seeing you online or in person at a future
event.