Amid all the excitement and anticipation in the run-up to the AIGA biennial, I thought it would be easy to describe my reasons for skipping this years’ bash in Boston. After all, I hated the Vancouver conference. Turns out, it’s a little more complicated than I thought.
For a number of years now I’ve been teaching graphic design at Central Michigan University, and have always mentored a student design club. When I first began, the group was affiliated with the ACD, but in recent years it has emerged as a stand-alone AIGA student chapter. Last year, while teaching a course on contemporary design issues, I required my students to participate in a current design blog. Unfortunately, the course coincided with a nasty exchange between me and another AIGA member over certain comments of mine about branding right here on Speak Up. This directly followed a complete failure on my part to recruit another long-time AIGA luminary to come speak to my students. In fact, after attending the ICSID Interdesign in South Africa, where I got along extremely well with the industrial designers, I’ve begun to seriously question my relevance to our profession. So perhaps the question is not, “Why attend the biennial convention?” but rather, “Why be in the AIGA at all?” Good question.
For starters, as currently configured, the AIGA seems more interested in branding than in almost anything else. One needs look no further than the organizations’ efforts to position itself as the undisputed arbiter of “value-added” for the profession. If this seems an unfair statement, just review a few recent AIGA announcements. I think you’ll find an organization that takes its own rhetoric very seriously (“THE professional association for design”). Trouble is, as corporate spending for branding increases, corporate spending on wages shrinks. In spite of all its posturing about improving wages for designers, the AIGA has elected to traverse this slippery slope via the exemplary corporate path of hustling to position and expand its own brand. Viva la causa!
As one who generally applies an altruistic paradigm to design practice, it offends me to see the AIGA promoting marketing to the Peoples Republic of China as a form of cross-cultural awareness. In such a context, the economics of enlightened self-interest ought to take a back seat to the demands of international development. Development takes many forms, opening markets being one of them. But banging the globalization drum has become typical of AIGA jingoism.
Then again, the AIGA considers itself a “professional” organization, largely devoted to furthering its membership. No clearer indication of this could be found than in the September 2nd response to the hurricane Katrina disaster from the Executive Director about a relief task force for designers and the subsequent Displaced Designer initiative. In this the AIGA is far more limited than service organizations, like Kiwanis or Rotary. These organizations provide worthwhile assistance to their communities with a wide range of scholarships and volunteer programs. Of course, the AIGA does self-promote highly touted community projects, like Design for Democracy, or its apparent collaboration with the Worldstudio Foundation. And Mr. Grefé did mention something about discussing emergency evacuation signage during the conference in Boston. But such showcase projects are the exceptions in a long roster of schemes more often linking creativity to economic exploitation.
A final example would be the way in which the AIGA has taken to endorsing design-related events. From San Francisco to Beijing, Denver to the Azores, all an AIGA sympathizer need do is organize a conference, seminar, or natural disaster and, sure enough, national hq will endorse it (two hundred and fifty displaced designers is unfortunate. Ten thousand dead is, well, you catch the drift of the comparison). One could almost believe the AIGA was attempting to unseat that ultimate endorsing entity of longstanding, ICOGRADA. Trouble is, such endorsements are facile, often mattering little to the larger world. But for the AIGA they function as, you guessed it, a secondary form of branding. So, “Alright!” you say, sounding a lot like the ever-frustrated George Kostanza, “Whaddaya want from the AIGA?” And at the expense of sounding like a tape loop, so often have I repeated this tired litany, I’ll attempt to account for my criticisms.
If I could change the AIGA, while still serving members’ traditional expectations, I’d bust my gut to make more than specious talk about how design can aid in the development of just societies. The business model of design, in which I feel the AIGA is over-invested (GAIN business conference, Harvard Business School Advanced Leadership Program, Design for New China Markets etc.), would not be eliminated, but it would be downplayed. Instead, I’d remind the membership that they are privileged citizens of an imperfect world and that, while working to correct the imperfections of our own society is a necessary endeavor, about four-fifths of our fellow human beings are the victims, not of imperfection, but of gross and active negligence. Travel abroad initiatives might include visits to South American orphanages or African refugee camps rather than global trade delegations.
If I promoted a national design education initiative the main themes would range through the Cs and Ds — community, conservation, development, diplomacy, rather than the Ps and Ts —professionalism, profit, typography, technology. My notion of “good business,” although it has nothing to do with shareholders, would be to institute a design scholarship for aspiring and worthy students from the developing world who can’t otherwise travel to Europe or North America to study. My idea of a biennial conference is a fund-raising event where 2000 members forego five days of back-slapping design revelry and instead donate the equivalent of the conference fee to a charitable cause. West African hunger relief anyone?
While I agree the present moment requires Americans to focus on one another and the necessary relief efforts down south, you may detect more than an outward leaning glance in these proposals. That’s because I believe that, even at times of catastrophe, Americans are still fortunate enough to take care of themselves and then some. Since 9/11 we’ve become a nation of navel-gazers, more self-absorbed and isolationist than is either healthy or absolutely necessary. As a people we are at our very best when we make generous efforts to assist other people outside of our own familiar context.
So, if my vision of the future of your friendly neighborhood professional organization sounds a bit too idealistic, like elderly Kiwanians handing out peanuts beside the local Safeway store; if I have offended your practical sensibilities with my bush-shaking “America Leave It And Love It” mantra, then we have clearly experienced a failure to communicate. Never fear; life is good. Have a great time in Beantown.
But if the idea that the WSO is at least as important to our future as the WTO strikes a chord in you, then maybe we do have something more to talk about. It can’t happen in Boston; I’ll be at home. But feel free to give me a ping at wandegeya@yahoo.com. It’s easy to find me; I’m always there —even when the bridge is out.
[Ed. Note: This discussion should not devolve into an I hate AIGA/I hate AIGA even more discussion. There are many intelligent points in this article around which an interesting dialog can be built. — Armin]
David Stairs, founder of Designers Without Borders, is secretly at work on a blog entitled design-altruism-project.org.
I think the AIGA is, like, totally fun. At some of the events I've been to, there was really great food to snack on and I got to talk to other designers. One time I wanted to get David Carson to autograph his book for me but I forgot to bring it. And at the last annual paper show they had a drawing for a free poster and my friend WON! It was so exciting. That's why Im a member.
On Sep.14.2005 at 07:18 PM