AIGA Boston Design Conference

September 25, 2005

A few weeks ago I attended the AIGA National Conference in
Boston. It was the 20th national conference for AIGA and my third (I
also went to New Orleans and Las Vegas). Surrounded by approximately
2500 fellow designers you certainly do feel the sense of community
that an organization like AIGA gives you. You get a chance to connect
with people outside your immediate sphere, learn new perspectives and
renew your sense of what it means to be a designer today.
The stated theme this year was simply "design," but
there was also an underlying theme of "designer citizen"
(not sure if this was intentional or not). Milton Glaser highlighted
this eloquently through his activism (read his speech). Bill Strickland passionately showed how "art can be a
portal" to a better world. Paola Antonelli from MOMA and Ze Frank gave two contrary
takes on the perceptions and effectiveness of what it means to be
"safe".
Check out some of the conference highlights yourself, and get
inspired!
– The resource page with podcasts, links and downloads of some of the
presentations
– The flickr sets
of posted conference pictures
– Conference blogs/reviews from Jason Kottke and Speak Up
I can’t really summarize the whole conference here, but I can say
that I left with a desire to do more. Yes, more.  More with my
career. More for our community. More for my clients. More for those
who need our help. And more for my fellow AIGA members
here in Houston. I know that a conference can’t be all things to all people, but it was definitely a valuable conference for me.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *