AIGA Membership Initiatives
Our collaboration with AIGA led to a series of branding and strategic efforts that not only leveraged the expertise of our team on many different levels, it has also been one of the brightest highlights of our careers.
To serve an organization with 70+ chapters all over the U.S. and an incredibly diverse community of engaged and passionate members, our work had to be multifaceted. Within the organization, we needed to help guide chapter leaders to become the best ambassadors a membership organization can have. Outwardly, we also needed to arm chapters across the U.S. with a vast array of digital and print materials to guide members at every point of their experience, and attract new members into the mix.
Every member of AIGA, including myself, is responsible for passing on the history of design. The past, present and future of design is all made possible by the efforts of many.
– Debra Woodfork, Designer, Member, AIGA Washington, DC
The goal of our work was two-fold: to uphold design as a multifaceted discipline – and the AIGA as an organization not just for print designers anymore, and to increase transparency about the inner workings of the organization and the varied benefits participating in the largest global community of designers in the world.
We come in all shapes and sizes.
The concept of geometric shapes emerged from some of our very early sketches – a central idea that represented the different disciplines that we refer to as “design,” the different individuals we refer to as “designers, and some of the tools of our trade – multifaceted, geometric, colorful, and often nerdily math-based. It was also a natural fit given that AIGA's iconic logo has been a square for the last 15 years. And so the concept grew, and we went with it. And go we did.
Based on our core idea we created a two-year campaign that lived in print, on screen, and in physical space. A series of custom-made props and participatory activities designed for 3,000 attendees of the 2013 AIGA conference in Minneapolis led to an incredible library of AIGA member images that would drive all of our materials for months to come. “This is AIGA,” an animated video unveiled at that same conference, shared the message with the AIGA community, highlighting the interconnectedness of all members across disciplines, career paths and chapters.
Expanding on the campaign over the course of 2014, our efforts focused on the development of AIGA’s first-ever national membership toolkit – a 200+ page binder to equip board members of all of AIGA’s local chapters with in-depth information about all aspects of the organization, including its history, organizational structure and membership benefits. The toolkit (also available in digital form) also included an exhaustive library of customizable design templates for use by every local team.
Together we can do amazing things.
Since the release of the membership toolkit and its supporting materials, AIGA membership has steadily increased and two new chapters have sprung up – Mobile, AL and Northwest Arkansas. The toolkit itself has been downloaded and shared thousands of times and all of the digital design templates have been used by every one of AIGA's 70 chapters. As a collaboration that has taken many forms, this project enabled our team to express our ideas across a broad range of different platforms, engaging our target audiences on many different levels. And for that, we couldn’t be happier with the outcome.
As for those original photo booth shots from Minneapolis four years ago, they still give us a really good giggle every time we come across one somewhere. Here's to all the wondrous, playful, inspiring mileage one can get from one really simple but versatile idea!
