January Community Meeting Recap

We began this month’s Community Meeting with introductions and answering the question “What do you want to learn in 2012?.” The most popular answers were: web design, how to network better, building up a client base, how to sell yourself (see the “Wear Your Selling Hat with Confidence” recap for some tips), and to make more time for personal projects.

During introductions, AIGA Raleigh President, Matt Munoz introduced us to our new Communications Director, Nation Hahn. Nation is a digital media culture and community building consultant, who will help in our community building and communications efforts.

Matt then went on to give us an overview of how our chapter has evolved in the past year and a half, and what our Chapters goals are. AIGA’s stance on design is that design improves the human condition, and as a chapter we exist to create a place where designing thrives. We do this by nurturing design ability, making the impact of design visible, and uniting people within the community. The events and programs we produce are centered around these activities.

Our efforts to nurture design ability include: the new website featuring new and more frequent content updates, the Web 101 series, the Homegrown Series and the new Pursuit Fund. The Pursuit Fund is a grant program that awards recipients funding to pursue a design-related goal. The State of Design exhibition will demonstrate the impact of design, and the Studio Tours, the Merry Mingle, and our chapters support in forming the AIGA Triad chapter bring the community together.

One of the attributes that defines out chapter is that we are ever-evolving, and thus we are always searching for ways to better serve our members and the community. With this in mind we broke up into four groups to brainstorm ideas to further our efforts in the areas of: our brand, design impact, uniting people, and design ability. We spent about 25 minutes discussing these topics and forming ideas. Afterwards, each group presented their top two ideas. The ideas presented were all focused on adding value and improving on the things we already do in these areas. If you are interested in being involved in any of these areas or have an idea you want to share you can send an email to one of the following addresses:

brand@raleigh.aiga.org
impact@@raleigh.aiga.org
unite@raleigh.aiga.org
ability@raleigh.aiga.org

After the presentations, we tried something new this month, a presentation of a personal project, by Britain Peck. The project grew out of Britain’s satirical name for his fantasy football team, the Whiteskins. It grew into an entire branded campaign, complete with logo, uniform designs, player trading cards, a Facebook page, and twitter account. It also became a cause for Britain to raise awareness of the struggles of Native Americans. He has designed Whiteskins t-shirts and is selling them to raise money for Native American causes. It is always interesting to see another’s designers process and how an idea evolved, and Britian’s project has grown into a personal crusade.

After Britain’s presentation, the meeting adjourned and all were invited to reconvene at Natty Greene’s in downtown Raleigh. Please join us at next month’s meeting on February 1, 2012.

By Amy Lyons
Published January 14, 2012