AIGA Identity System

Expanded branding system for the largest professional association of designers in the world, built upon the organization’s iconic square mark.
Client: AIGA, the professional association for designTimeframe: 2015 – 2016Website: www.aiga.org

Following the success of our work on AIGA’s membership initiatives, our team took on the holy grail of all branding assignments – the identity for AIGA itself. Working closely with the organization’s national office for over a year, we rolled out a refreshed identity system that not only retains the spirit of the original identifier designed by Paul Rand, but the acronym box which has been an integral part of the AIGA identity for the last fifteen years.

Expertise
Branding + Identity Systems
Communication Tools + Collateral
Environmental Graphics

The expanded identity system bolsters AIGA’s brand strengths while brightening the visual language to emphasize the organization’s core attributes and personality. Passionate, flexible, and open, the new system introduces bolder use of color, a new typographic sensibility, and a more active and dynamic role for the logo mark in all of its applications. 

 

Available in three variations: square, horizontal, and vertical, the refreshed AIGA identity provides greater usage flexibility for a broad range of applications, playing a significantly more dynamic role in each visual context, and providing greater emphasis on the organization’s tagline. 

AIGA has the opportunity to work with the most talented designers in the country. Our expectations are high, yet they have been exceeded in our engagements with Kiss Me I’m Polish.

– Ric Grefé, Former Executive Director, AIGA

As the building block of the AIGA identity system, the square mark is applied to all materials, whether for internal or public use. How the logotype is applied to a given design however, is dictated by the specific purpose of each application. Materials created for and by AIGA’s national office employ a custom dynamic compositional logic in which the AIGA acronym box is used to activate the entire layout.

 

Any one of the standard national logotypes is then used as a visual anchor on all of AIGA’s public-facing and co-branded materials, while a detailed set of design templates and guidelines can be used for creating custom logos for each of AIGA’s 70 U.S. chapters, future chapters, student groups, international affiliates, and all of its national programs and sponsor partnerships. Every single one of AIGA’s chapters has its own personality and unique point of view but as connected entities of one national organization, a shared visual system is crucial in empowering the individuality of all while speaking with a unified voice.

Culminating in a series of customized style guides for any possible combination, permutation, or supporting application, the expanded AIGA identity system celebrates its history of design excellence, while reflecting all of the vibrance and diversity of the organization's 70 chapters, 26,000 members, and the reach of all of its programs and initiatives.