Several years ago I founded and was president of the South Carolina chapter of AIGA. We had a ton of fantastic speakers that came through, but there was one event that had the most impact for me. I made friends with the president of the Honolulu chapter at a leadership retreat and talked her into doing a ‘Culture Exchange’ for our upcoming December event. We boxed up things that were specific to South Carolina in addition to projects designed for SC clients by SC designers. The Honolulu chapter did the same. We mailed the boxes to each other and on the day of the event, the packages were opened. I was blown away by how much their culture affects their design and it forced me to look at design in a completely different way. Font selection, color usage, and other design choices inspired by the visual language of their cultural surroundings were inspiring and revealing. The following year we worked with the Las Vegas chapter on another exchange. Once again, I was blown away by the completely different styles of design reflective of the Vegas vibe. I’ve been very aware when I travel to really observe the design around me and how culture played a part in the end result. More specifically the typography. My end goal is to bring awareness to typography and how culture plays a part in the choices that are made. I’m hoping this blog will do just that…
For those interested, this is me being interviewed by Diane Gibbs for Design Recharge about the process of starting an AIGA chapter.
This is such a cool idea! I would love to talk to you about all you learned and gained from this exchange. And by looking at your blog, you have discovered another hidden treasure which is that when you move back to an area you can see it with new eyes! Again what a great challenge for us to push ourselves to look at our world in different ways and from new perspectives.
Marius Valdes suggested I contact you to be on my weekly spreecast called “Design Recharge.”
“Design Recharge” is a Spreecast channel for growing and established designers devoted to motivating, inspiring, and educating designers. The impetus behind the project was also to build a community where designers can interact weekly about topics that are relevant to design and the design business, without leaving our offices or taking hours out of our work day.
My name is diane gibbs and I have been a graphic designer for over 15 years and have been teaching graphic design at the college level for ten years. I have been to many design conferences and am always energized and inspired when I leave. I have often thought how great it would be to access the design community on a more regular basis. That desire is the motivation behind the “Design Recharge” project.
This summer I began recording live interviews with other designers to discuss topics related to design once a week on an online platform called Spreecast. This free, online community of designers has grown each week (all the episodes are recorded) and is beneficial to designers at any level. Each episode is an hour long and has been described as a laid-back conversation between designers. I was wondering if you would like to come on and talk about your design process, how you come to your ideas etc and possibly about this exchange project and how it has influenced your designs. You could discuss other projects you are working on or a specific area of expertise if you would like. Would you be interested in being a guest on Thurs. Oct 18 at 4pm ET? If not then perhaps another time in the near future.
The Design Recharge community meets each week via the Spreecast platform, you can find all the previously recorded shows at http://www.spreecast.com/channels/design-recharge-channel. I would love to have you on in the future if you are interested. We record each week on Wednesdays at 2:30pm ET unless there are special occasions when another day works better. This is a live show and there will be people joining us from many cities from around the world. You are welcome to attend and see what it is like, it is free you just need to create a login at http://www.spreecast.com. Thank you for considering this opportunity,
diane gibbs
diane.gibbs@gmail.com
For more information about Design Recharge go to
http://www.littlebirdcommunications.com/designrecharge
Hey Nikki!
Great talk Thursday! Wow, was it only three days ago? And I very much enjoyed talking with you – thanks for letting me invite myself to dinner. Aaaaaand I hope you like your copy of Abservd. Any suggestions (ANY at all – it’s a work in progress) are welcome.
So I heard about a portfolio contest by HOW with Jessica Walsh as a judge (among other luminaries like the fabulous Debbie Millman), and in my what’s-she-look-like-naked Googling, I found this blog post: http://www.creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2012/may/sagmeister-walsh. So that makes a little more sense – Sagmeister was naked for his original New Studio Announcement 19 years ago.
Anyway, keep up the great work and don’t be a stranger to Cincinnati!
Brad
I really like your site, it has some beautiful photography and images from the world, at times I think I am the only person who notices brick names and cool typography in odd places… apparently not! I look forward to more posts.