Futurism(s): An Inclusive History of Graphic Design

It is always an honor and a pleasure to have Ellen Lupton present. A huge thank you to Ellen for her generosity in delivering the recent talk on Futurism(s) as well as writing this article, for those who weren’t able to listen live.

On Wednesday, April 22, 2020, Baltimore’s stalwart design history group launched its new identity. Formerly known as SHAG (Society for History and Graphics), the group is now called SoDA, Society of Design Arts. It was my pleasure to deliver a talk called “Futurism(s)” as SoDA’s first event, in collaboration with AIGA Baltimore and Stevenson University. This online event attracted over 200 guests from the Baltimore region and beyond. Thanks to SoDA’s energetic new member Raquel Castedo, many designers from Brazil logged on to hear the talk and participate, as well as people from Utah, Tennessee, and elsewhere.

Below is my short summary of the talk, which was not recorded. —Ellen Lupton


“Futurism(s)” represents an approach to teaching Graphic Design History. At MICA, my colleague Brockett Horne and I are striving to tell a more inclusive history of design than the chronology we learned back when we were students. Most GD History courses include an ode to Italian Futurism. This canonical all-male art movement can be a leaping-off point for discussing other forms of future-leaning art and creativity. “Futurism(s)” is a talk with three chapters: Italian Futurism, Afrofuturism, and the Cyborg Manifesto.

Italian Futurism

Italian Futurism was launched by F. T. Marinetti in 1909. Frankly, it’s hard to find a more patriarchal, exclusionary, white-dominated movement in the history of design-isms. Marinetti expanded our view of the printed page with his innovative typography, but he infused his ideas with hatred and violence. He wrote, “We will glorify war—the world’s only hygiene—militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of freedom.” He wanted to destroy museums, libraries, and schools in order to make way for a factory-born future.

Futurismo-filippo-tommaso-marinetti

Although Italian Futurism scorned women and embraced fascist ideology, the Futurists explored liberated styles of masculinity. The Futurist painter Giacomo Balla, who published his “Futurist Manifesto of Men’s Clothing” in 1913, dreamed of menswear tailored with interactive fabrics that could be changed at will to represent a man’s shifting moods: “Loving, Arrogant, Persuasive, Diplomatic, Unitonal, Multitonal, Shaded, Polychrome, Perfumed.” Italian Futurism took place in a particular place and time, and many of us reject its politics while admiring its revolutionary aesthetics.

Afrofuturism

Afrofuturism is a movement in music, art, and literature that arose in the 1950s and continues today. (The term was invented by critic Mark Dery in 1994.) Afrofuturism embraces world-building, a creative methodology arising from science-fiction and gaming. World-building emphasizes mythic time rather than historical time. It employs storytelling across many genres, from novels, comic books, and toys to fashion, movies, music, and fan fiction. World-building actively engages an audience in experiencing a world that is both real and imagined.

Afrofuturist artists include the musician Sun Ra (1914–1993), an American jazz composer, bandleader, and poet who claimed to be an alien from Saturn—and always dressed appropriately for his role, building a mythic world around his persona. George Clinton’s funk band Parliament created their own “P-Funk mythology,” generating an elaborate backstory to the music. The Afrofuturist album covers of the 1960s and 70s featured space ships, Egyptian pyramids, and other symbols of cosmic knowledge. Today, a new generation has brought feminist identities to Afrofuturism. Artists including Solange Knowles, Rihanna, and Janelle Monae use sound, performance, fashion, and storytelling to build vivid worlds ruled by warrior queens and rebellious androids.

Billy Graham was the first black art director in the comics industry. In addition to creating a character called Luke Cage, based on Blaxploitation action films, Graham was the main comic artist to work on the Black Panther comic book series, from 1969 through 1976. These comics continue to be published today, with storylines created by renowned Black authors including Ta-Nehisi Coates and Roxane Gay. In 2018 Ryan Coogler directed the international blockbuster film The Black Panther, featuring production design by Hannah Beachler and costumes by Ruth E. Carter. Together, this creative team designed a high-tech civilization that combines aspects of contemporary African urbanism, architecture, and fashion with futuristic details.

Each of these exercises in Afrocentric world-building questions culturally dominant readings of technology. Mainstream representations of the future—whether utopian or dystopian—have pictured technology as a primarily white, male instrument of power, in contrast with subjugated human bodies that are seen as female and/or non-white. These artists have transformed how technology is represented and understood across cultures.

The Cyborg Manifesto

Donna Haraway’s essay “Cyborg Manifesto” (1985) represents a third vein of futurist design and philosophy. Haraway questions the binaries that privilege white, male, human creatures while “othering” countless alternative modes of life. The cyborg is a being who is both biological and mechanical. The cyborg challenges cultural binaries such as male/female, animal/human, and human/machine. According to Haraway, cyborgs don’t appear only in science fiction. The cyborgs have arrived! They are here among us! Examples of cyborg life include A.I., virtual reality, bioengineering, psychoactive drugs, and countless medical technologies, from fertility treatments to cloning and transgender medicine. Fashion has always altered the body, while people with physical differences use wheelchairs, prosthetics, glasses, and hearing aids to expand their mobility and change their sense perceptions.

Designers working in the field of speculative design use techniques such as illustration, model-making, animation, and photo-illustration to imagine new, often dystopian futures. In their project Life Support: Respiratory Dog (2008), Revital Cohen and Tuur van Balen explored whether a dog could breathe for a human being. Living “service animals” help humans overcome many sensory and emotional challenges; the designers ask, why not have service animals augment our essential biological functions as well? The project is intended to be fictional and provocative, not realistic.

revital-cohen-respiratory-dog-design-futurism

Despite its fictional aims, Respiratory Dog has assumed new relevance today, a time when thousands of patients with severe Covid-19 require artificial life support. Every intubated Covid patient is a cyborg. Devices for respiratory life support are landmarks in the history of design and medicine. The Negative Pressure Ventilator—also known as the “iron lung”—was used to artificially ventilate patients who were paralyzed by polio. An iron lung encloses the user’s body in a negative-pressure chamber. Rhythmic pressure changes inside the chamber cause the person’s lungs to expand and contract. Thousands of these machines were mass-produced for use in homes and care facilities before the discovery of the polio vaccine in 1955. Iron lungs were eventually replaced with positive-pressure ventilators, which force air in and out of the patient’s lungs through the airway rather than exerting pressure against the chest. These modern ventilators require heavy sedation and put tremendous strain on the body. Today, modern versions of the iron lung are being reconsidered as a technology that is less expensive and more humane than a standard ventilator. One such prototype, Exovent, is being developed in the UK (as of April 2020). According to the developers of this old/new medical technology, the Exovent is a simpler, cheaper, and less invasive technology; it allows patients to remain awake, to eat, drink, and take medications on their own, and to talk on their phones.

What is “futurism”? All futurist movements, from Italian Futurism to Afrofuturism and speculative design, are opportunities to challenge the present by picturing what comes next. Designers are imagining the future whenever they question how things look, work, or signify in the current moment. Sometimes, the future arrives on the wings of catastrophe. Sometimes, the future must be created by excavating the past. Design history doesn’t have to be chronological. Like world-building, design history can pursue ideas across simultaneous and overlapping dimensions.


Bibliography

 

  • Reynaldo Anderson, “Afrofuturism 2.0 & the Black Speculative Arts Movement: Notes on a Manifesto,” Obsidian, Vol. 42, No. 1/2, (2016), pp. 228-236
  • Yytasha L. Womack, Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture (Chicago Review Press, 2013).
  • Ruth la Ferla, “Afrofuturism: The Next Generation,” New York Times, December 12, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/12/fashion/afrofuturism-the-next-generation.html
  • Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby, Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2014).
  • Donna J. Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York: Routledge, 1991).
  • Dan Hassler-Forest, “The Politics of World Building: Heteroglossia in Janelle Monáe’s Afrofuturist WondaLand,” World Building, ed. Marta Boni (Amsterdam University Press, 2017).

 


About the Author

Ellen Lupton | Senior Curator of Contemporary Design at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York City. Her exhibitions include “How Posters Work,” “Beautiful Users,” and “The Senses: Design Beyond Vision.” Lupton is founding director of the Graphic Design MFA Program at MICA in Baltimore, where she has authored numerous books on design processes, including “Thinking with Type,” “Graphic Design Thinking,” and “Graphic Design: The New Basics.” Her recent books “Design Is Storytelling” and “Health Design Thinking” were published by Cooper Hewitt. She is an AIGA Gold Medalist and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.


Top 3 Skills UX and UI Designers Need to Know in 2020

Thanks to Kelly Strine, owner of Left-brained Creative, LLC for writing this blog post!


The AIGA Baltimore community had the pleasure of sitting down with Fearless, a full-stack digital services firm, this January to discuss current trends and skills user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) designers need to know. And it’s not as scary as you might think.

Meet the Players

Held at Fearless headquarters inside of Spark Coworking Spaces in downtown Baltimore, the event was a panel-style Q&A. Panelists included:

Jordan Watts, Lead UX Designer, UX Coach
Antoine RJ Wright, Lead UX Designer, @ARJWright
Amanda Mancuso, UX Designer
Tyler Bolchoz, Product Designer
Rachel Petrucci, Product Designer
Daedriana Harvey, UX Designer

fearless tech baltimore designers seated for panel discussion
Photography Credits: Krystal Carpintieri

The Landscape

The UX/UI space is constantly changing as technology advances at lightning speed. Designing for non-traditional interfaces (smartwatch, eyewear, ring, etc.), voice user interface (VUI), and augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) will be the shiny new skills UX and UI designers will be homing in on. However, as technology changes, it’s often challenging for designers to gain experience in the latest and greatest and break into the UX/UI field.

What we learned from speaking with Fearless is that yes, UX and UI designers should have experience in design, code, content, research, and strategy (at varying levels of each, and that’s okay!); but that it’s equally important for UX and UI designers to possess super-sleuth soft skills and a fierce desire to learn. That’s far less daunting.

Photography Credits: Krystal Carpintieri

Skill 1: Collaborate Well with Others

In the past, there’s been clear segregation between designers and programmers. Designers would figure out what the “thing” (website, landing page, app, etc.) would look like, then hand it over to the programmers to code and be done with it. And as you can imagine, there’s bound to be some friction with this process.

“It’s not really a design hand-off, it’s a design implementation.”
Rachel Petrucci, Product Designer

These days, the concept of a “hand-off” has vanished. At Fearless, as with many other agencies, designers and programmers work together in a very integrative process. Designers and programmers come together for scrum reviews and standup meetings, and developers are invited to design reviews and product testing. As Rachel put it, “it’s not really a design hand-off, it’s a design implementation.”

That means whether you’re a designer or a programmer or a magical unicorn who does both, you must possess strong communication skills and a willingness to collaborate. Designing in a technologically advanced space means you’ll need to rely on others to create a successful product. Designing at this scale does not happen in a vacuum. As Tyler said, “you’re doing the product a disservice if you just hand it over, but if you’re collaborating everyone is engaged.”

audience listening to panel discussion on UX design
Photography Credits: Krystal Carpintieri

Skill 2: Learn How to Build Empathy

We asked our Fearless panel what steps they take when asked to build a website from scratch. Across the board, step one was research. Before design is even a consideration, learn everything you can about the needs of your client. Do they need a website, or would they be better served by an app? The research phase also includes market research, identifying pain points and opportunities, and sitting with the users—it can take weeks.

“Your perspective is not the default”
—Jordan Watts, Lead UX Designer, UX Coach

But the critical part of researching is gaining the ability to build empathy for your users. Putting yourself in the shoes of the user is the most effective way to create successful UX and UI design. As we discussed inclusive design, Antoine suggested starting a design with the least-sited person in mind, then build up. Can this person use the product on a watch, how about on a mobile phone, tablet, non-touch computer, touch computer, etc.

Jordan summed it up best by saying, “your perspective is not the default.” Having empathy for users and being able to tap into how others will use the product (via user testing, research, etc.) will help you reach every user and create a better product.

AIGA baltimore attendees at spark coworking spaces
Photography Credits: Krystal Carpintieri

Skill 3: Be Hungry to Learn

As technology continues to evolve the only way designers and programmers can stay relevant is to stay hungry…to learn. Without a constant desire to learn, the skillsets of those in the tech industry will inevitably turn stale.

When we asked panelists what the top characteristic trait was that they look for in a new hire, Rachel and Amanda said they would hire someone who is curious and actively seeks out opportunities to learn and develop new skills. Antoine and Jordan discussed the merits of cross-functionality—and yes, there is value in knowing how to design and code—but it is equally important to understand your area of expertise.

So, if you’re looking to impress your current managers or are looking to break into the UX and UI space, take the initiative to develop your skillset. Attend hands-on boot camps and workshops (rather than lectures) to develop your skills, portfolio projects, and gain experience. As Amanda put it, in an interview she would rather hear about what you learned from failed experiences, rather than hear a candidate prattle on about what they think she wants to hear.

valerie anderson and alice rambissoon smiling for photo
AIGA Baltimore President, Valerie Anderson with the Interior Designer of the Spark Co-Working Space, Alice Rambissoon. Photography Credits: Krystal Carpintieri

What Did We Learn?

It’s no big surprise that the UX and UI fields are growing, and the demand to create beautiful, interactive products for numerous interfaces will continue to grow as well. Being on the cutting-edge of these technologies means possessing the technical skills, yes, but equally as important is being able to demonstrate how UX and UI can add value. That means learning how to be a strong communicator (and listener!), being empathetic toward clients and teammates, and being a dedicated, lifelong learner.

If you’re interested in learning more about Fearless, head over to fearless.tech; and if you want to join the Fearless team, check out fearless.tech/careers

Follow Fearless on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook at @fearlessbmore. And follow AIGA Baltimore—@aigabaltimore—on all your favorite channels so you never miss great events like this one!

 Share your thoughts below on what skills should be on the minds of UX and UI designers as we move into 2020!

Design & Dine Recap: Debbie Millman’s Perspective on Social Media & Personal Branding

Thanks to Kelly Strine for writing this blog post!

The 8th annual AIGA Baltimore Design Week kicked off with a special Design & Dine with the legendary Debbie Millman on Friday, October 11, 2019, at Topside’s beautiful Garden Room. Founder and host of the Design Matters Podcast, Debbie has interviewed over 500 artists, designers, and industry experts. This special Design & Dine was no lecture. Instead, it was Debbie’s signature conversational interview style with 30 of Baltimore’s industry professionals. Had it been recorded, it could’ve been the next episode of Design Matters.

The casual discussion explored how we portray our lives on social media and in our own personal branding. Debbie has “very, very strong feelings about people as brands,” and why we sometimes hide the truth––or downright lie––in the social media versions of our lives.

Personal Branding

Debbie has studied the evolution of branding, and how we’ve grown with it, for the past 17 years. At its core, branding is about mark-making and building consensus around that mark. Through quality and consistency, shared views and opinions regarding products and services can be accomplished.

If we fast-forward through the history of corporate branding, we come to a more recent phenomenon: personal branding. Personal branding is the practice of marketing people and their careers as brands, with an intentional effort to influence public perception. Sound familiar in the design industry where everyone wants to position themselves a certain way in the marketplace?

Photography Credits: Bryan Burke
Photography Credits: Bryan Burke

Humans are Messy

As Debbie so bluntly put it, “Humans are messy.” We have a lot of feelings. But brands don’t have that kind of depth. Sure, brands can evolve, but brands are rooted in consistency. If humans run the emotional gamut and can reinvent themselves, but brands are built on consistency, can personal brands be successful? Can consensus be built?

From a technology standpoint, we’re living in an ever-connected environment. We’re always just a tap, click, or voice command away from whatever we need. Yet we’re oddly disconnected in our interpersonal relationships. Why? Isn’t social media supposed to make us feel more connected?

Our Online Personas

In many cases, people use social media as a highlight reel. We share what we are proud of and the happy moments and hide what we are ashamed of. That’s natural, right? But if you’re only seeing the highlights of other people’s lives, it’s much easier to feel left-behind or alone in your own life. The things that we don’t share tend to be the things that build a better connection with others.

For those of us who maintain a personal brand, Debbie challenged us to consider how social media impacts our branding. If we hide certain aspects of our lives to position ourselves a particular way, we start to pull away from our authentic selves. We start to create an online persona who is our ideal selves, but ultimately this can lead us to feel even more disconnected from ourselves and others.

Photography Credits: Krystal Carpintieri
Photography Credits: Krystal Carpintieri

How do we combat the disconnect? Here are a few ideas:

  1. Digital minimalism: More and more people are disconnecting from social media to live their lives IRL (in real life). Taking a break from social media or ditching it altogether is one way to reconnect and build better relationships with others.
  2. Be authentic: Rather than showing only the highlights, show your authentic self—challenges and all. People connect with honesty. But the key is to help; not commiserate. If you’re going through a difficult time, chances are someone else is going through it too. Share resources or seek support, rather than just complain.
  3. Set an intention: Ask yourself, why am I posting this? Am I looking for self-validation? Sympathy? Is it a humble brag? Being honest about why you’re posting sends a clear message to your audience. Did you land your dream client after working your tail off on the pitch? Yeah, I’ll celebrate that win with you. But do I care about your “picky” client? Nah, I don’t need your negativity.
Photography Credits: Bryan Burke
Photography Credits: Bryan Burke

Social Branding

As Debbie notes, branding is always evolving. The most recent anomaly is social branding, which is marketing for social change. Social branding projects, such as the Me Too Movement and Black Lives Matter, are designed to change a culture. So, whereas personal branding fails at the individual level due to the complexity of human emotions, social branding succeeds due to the social change people can rally around. Social branding builds consensus.

Continue the Conversation

Where do you stand on personal branding? Is your personal brand a true brand in that it builds consensus, or is it more of a brand identifier to set you apart in the marketplace? Do you tend to hide the truth on social media in hopes of creating an ideal online persona? Share your thoughts in the comments below, we want to hear from you!

About the Speaker:
Debbie Millman
Twitter & Instagram: @debbiemillman

Named “one of the most creative people in business” by Fast Company, and “one of the most influential designers working today” by Graphic Design USA, Debbie Millman is also an author, educator, curator and host of the podcast Design Matters.

Wanna get a design job? Think like a hiring manager.

If my experience at Ink and Pixels taught me anything, it is that young designers continue to face the permission paradox—you can’t get a job without experience, but need a job to gain experience. Each of the five students whose portfolios I reviewed voiced this same set of concerns: Lots of applications are sent, but little-to-no feedback or opportunity exists after hitting send. Just about all students recognized that there was a glut of applications, and thus it’s hard to stand out from the crowd. And while the concerns are valid, I’ve begun to wonder if students fully understand the business side of the equation.

Hiring is a complicated and time-consuming process. To hire a new employee the business has to shell out costs, often in the form of man-hours and marketing costs. In business settings where a Human Resource Department is involved, there is time cost associated with posting, reviewing, and interviewing potential candidates. In addition, there is the time design managers and creative directors have to set aside to review and interview candidates. For a business, this time falls into an un-billable category, and thus represents lost income. A company is willing to put up with this lost income if they can identify and hire the right candidates, who are likely to stick around for a few years.

HR and the design team members eliminate candidates quickly—they have to—and they do so without prejudice. As a young designer, it is crucial to show (or tell) potential employers exactly what benefit, what problem they can solve when they are applying and interviewing. Sure, this is a gross over-simplification, and there are no absolute ways to achieve that goal. But as young designers often throw a lot of different types of work out to be reviewed (and I definitely believe this is a good thing), they should tailor their work to the needs of the potential employers. If the job is print heavy, show some print work first. If the job leans more towards a digital space, show some digital work first.

The importance of events like Ink and Pixels shouldn’t be overlooked. While not every reviewer or panelist will have jobs to hand out, talking to pro’s in this setting is a very structured form of networking. One-on-one time with a handful of design professionals can only help young designers understand the difference and challenges in each unique design environment. Talking to the attendees at Ink and Pixels was the highlight of my weekend (I mean, I live in a house with two toddlers), and I commend AIGA Baltimore for once again putting on this event.


About the Author:

RobMaguire_HeadshotRob Maguire has over 15 years’ experience providing graphic design and marketing services to businesses of all sizes. After changing gigs each time his wife switched jobs and cities, Rob decided to begin his role as an independent creative. His experience working as an agency art director, and later as an in-house senior package designer has cultivated a knack for understanding the unique needs of each client. Today, Rob works and lives in Maryland with his wife, kids, and dogs.


About Ink & Pixels:

Ink & Pixels is one of AIGA Baltimore’s largest events focused on helping designers prepare for a career or career shift. This year’s Ink & Pixels event was held on Saturday, April 13th at Stevenson University.

More about Ink & Pixels

Behind Design Week 2018’s Branding; A Discussion With idfive

AIGA Baltimore was thrilled when local Baltimore design studio idfive agreed to be our Branding Sponsor for Design Week 2018.

Since 2013, we have reached out to a local design agency to partner with us and bring Design Week alive visually. Past partners have included Fastspot, Orange Element, Gilah Press + Design, Eye Byte Solutions, and Exit10.

This year, we want to bring you behind the scenes with our Branding Sponsor, idfive, to learn more about their inspiration for this year’s branding for Design Week, their work outside of AIGA Baltimore, and what their company is all about!
design week baltimore

What was the inspiration for idfive’s Design Week Branding?

I wanted to take this creative opportunity to address what I think is the central issue in Baltimore – the “two Baltimores” – by attempting to build a visual system that would unify, represent, and complete the “feel” of Baltimore. I thought about the disparate ways our City has been represented visually – a sort of mishmash of the old (cobblestones and gas lamps), the new (modernist/brutalist architecture), and the forgotten (formstone, Waters-esque camp, The Wire).

I kept getting hung up on was the source of many of our current divisions – the 1937 Federal Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) “redlining” map. So I suggested to our designer Heather that we re-use, re-purpose, and “break” shapes and forms from that tragically unjust document as a way to acknowledge our City’s past and represent its current divisions, while still looking with hope toward a more unified future.

The tagline was a natural extension of this visual theme, tied back to design.

What were the steps involved in creating the branding?

We divided a volunteer squad of six creative team members in to three teams of two (a copywriter and a designer), hashed out rough concepts separately, and came together under the guidance of Courtney Glancy to critique and tweak.

I can’t speak to the other teams’ processes, but for me and Heather, beers, dinner, and doodles on some cocktail napkins in Hampden were all it really took to come together on concepting. Heather and I have complementary strengths and work together well. I’m very analytically minded and always try to zoom out to process everything on the level of overarching themes and concepts, and she lives in the nitty-gritty of the execution phase where she’s amazing at expanding and exploring concepts within a consistent visual language.

aiga baltimore design week branding idfive

What was the inspiration for being a part of Design Week 2018?

Courtney asked us, “wanna do it?” And we said “hell yes!”

What was the goal of the Design Week branding?

Try to answer the questions:
“What is Baltimore design?”
“What should Baltimore design be?”
“How can we represent Baltimore in a way that feels like Baltimore?”

AIGA Baltimore Design Week 2018 logo by idfive

Could you explain an exciting idfive project completely unrelated to AIGA?

We’re currently redesigning the website for Maryland Food Bank, which distributes 37 million meals every year to people in Maryland. You can’t ask for a more inspiring client than that. As a copywriter, any time you find yourself shedding tears while you’re writing, you know you’re on the right track. Whoever’s reading this should donate.

What are your typical process steps? Do they differ from the work you did for AIGA?

Usually I start with a task list item, then go back and research the brand or the industry until I find an angle of entry, then organize my thoughts into buckets, and execute. I typically think slow and work fast. The process for AIGA was similar, but since the task wasn’t laid out with really any specificity, I also got to jumpstart my usual process with my own questions – “What do I want this task to be?” “What don’t I want this task to be?”

Your firm recently made a big move to the MICA campus. What’s your favorite part about the new location?

Anytime I need a boost or a break, I can walk through a gallery space and see something interesting, or pop into the library and flip through art books.

baltimore design agency idfive brands baltimore design week

How do you typically find your clients?

I let the new biz team handle that, and my focus is on doing high-quality work that makes their job easy.

What’s an ideal day at the office like?

A nice varied mix of tasks, some deep workflow where time has no meaning, some lightning round problem solving whack-a-mole, some positive client feedback when you check your email, some solid belly laughs with other team members, and that feeling at the end – when you fill out your timesheet – of “I just knocked this one out of the park.” And also idfive bought us pizza.

What is idfive’s mission? How did it come about?

Our whole thing is helping mission-driven brands do good better. So we do things like no-commission media campaigns, and website redesigns that are built to drive action AND help build more efficient governance structures. The whole setup is pure Andres, who is without a doubt the best boss I’ve ever had.

aiga baltimore design week

If you could describe your team and work philosophy in 5 words, what would they be?

How can I help? Oooohdonuts!

What’s your vision for Baltimore? For Maryland?

I’d like to see Baltimore, Maryland, and America transcend its entrenched divisions, build sustainably and fairly, and keep on being weird and wonderful.

idfive baltimore design agency logo png

AIGA Women Lead Initiative: Baltimore Community Meeting Recap

Written By: Jennifer Marin Jericho | Photo Credit: Kate Lawless

Women today outnumber men in AIGA’s membership—as in design schools and various disciplines—yet leadership, representation, and parity remain a challenge.

AIGA Women Lead is committed to empowering women in design and advancing the vital discourse on issues facing professional women today without generalizing or segregating women designers. Instead, we aim to address persistent biases and inequities, inclusively and constructively, through programming around three goals:

  • Celebrate the achievements of women in design.
  • Cultivate awareness of gender-related issues, while building knowledge and leadership skills.
  • Connect by facilitating relationships within and beyond the design industry.
AIGA-Women-Lead-Initiative-Baltimore-Discussion
Baltimore creatives gather to develop ideas for launching a women lead program

How AIGA Baltimore Is Working To Empower Women

On March 22, 2018, the AIGA Baltimore Women Lead Initiative Committee hosted a community meeting to connect with local creatives and facilitated a design thinking workshop to develop ideas for launching a women lead program in Baltimore.

While we were interested in leading a local initiative, we wanted to make sure to validate our assumptions about what women in the design community need from AIGA Baltimore. The process may take longer than tossing an event together, but our goal is to build something that speaks directly to the women in our community, is flexible and adaptable, and most importantly, is scalable.

AIGA-Women-Lead-Initiative-Baltimore-Meeting
Women from various industries and community programs worked together to answer a tough question.

To accomplish all this, we first had to bring together women in various industries and community programs to ask the question: How might we help women leaders 10-15 years into their career, get the resources they need to step into leadership roles?

Why was this question so specific? Because we have to start somewhere, and often when you tackle large issues such as this one, you run the risk of trying to solve all the problems, and end up solving none of the problems.

Our goal is to empower women to grow professionally and use the tactics and resources we provide to tackle issues that they are passionate about in their own communities. I imagine this initiative as a ripple effect, because we are all responsible and capable of influencing change, and it is crucial that these initiatives are diverse and inclusive.

I imagine this initiative as a ripple effect, because we are all responsible and capable of influencing change

AIGA-Women-Lead-Initiative-Baltimore-Workshop
In Design Thinking workshops, an empathy map helps build understanding.

Outcomes of the Design Thinking Workshop

In our two-hour workshop, we led two specific activities. The first was an empathy map, where we broke into groups of 4-5 people and developed personas of various types of women in the industry. The goal of the activity is to put the person at the center and think about what she is feeling, thinking, saying, and doing when it comes to her professional goals. After brainstorming, we then shareback and group common themes. Here are some of the themes that were common among the personas we developed:

  • Anxiety/Uncertainty
  • Growth and ambition
  • Social Interaction/Relationships
  • Self Worth/Reality Check
  • Planning for Future
  • Lifelong Learning/Business Knowledge
  • Life Balance
what do women designers feel, think, and do?
Participants noted that this persona, Alexis, may feel determined but sometimes depleted. She mentors younger designers, but she knows she needs mentors of her own.

The outcomes were not surprising. Most professionals struggle to strike a balance between focusing on career, learning new skills, balancing a personal life, and developing the confidence to do all of the above while maintaining a healthy lifestyle.

How might AIGA’s Women Lead Initiative help to fill the gaps?

To answer this question we did a big ideas exercise to come up with potential solutions to support women in their careers. We had three major themes that came from this workshop: group mentorship, skill development, and self-care.

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The ideas centered around skill development, group mentorship, and self care. All in favor of a 4-day work week, say aye!

Group Mentorship
While coworkers, family, and friends can be a great support system, a professional network is crucial. While the former can provide great emotional support, the latter can provide you the right tools, help you tackle specific challenges and navigate the complexities of building a successful career. I am a huge proponent of building a brain trust, people that challenge you and push you to be better. It has been instrumental in my own career growth.

I just attended the Women Spanning the Globe Leadership Conference hosted by the World Trade Center Institute here in Baltimore. One comment that resonated with me was a speaker who suggested we be more like spiders. Build a web: a network of people that support us and help us catch opportunity. Love this!

Skill Development
We have heard from our members that inspiration is an excellent resource. Inspiration can fuel our creativity, inspire us on that specific project, and push us out of “unstuck”. Yet inspiration can only take you so far; stretching your skills and capabilities will better prepare us to face the challenging problems we face as creatives in a fast-paced world.

This means more than learning new technical skills, we need leadership, business, and management skills to help us grow professionally. This is a common challenge of many designers in our field and it is one we are starting to tackle as a national organization to help designers better communicate the value of design and collaborate with professionals in other disciplines.

Self-Care
This continues to be a common theme in the lives of busy professionals. We know that rest and regeneration are crucial to creativity, but we continue to struggle with the demands of our personal and professional lives. I’d like to see some intentional programming that helps us carve some space for activities that energize us.

I look forward to seeing how this evolves, and I hope you will join us. Stay tuned as we continue to craft a plan for a women lead program that fits the needs of our community members. We will be looking for volunteers in the coming months, so look out and keep checking in!

Jennifer Marin Jericho
AIGA Women Lead Steering Committee

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Thank you to all who joined us for the last community meeting!

Join us at the next Women Lead Initiative Meeting

An Evening of Design Thinking and Radical Collaboration with AIGA Baltimore

Written By: Joseph Carter-Brown and Valerie Anderson | Photo Credit: Frances Miller and Leo Brady

AIGA Baltimore’s Community Meeting started in late 2016 with the intention to provide a platform for members within our creative community to share ideas, concerns, and hopes for the betterment of Baltimore. In meetings past, we’ve heard from representatives from AIGA National on the work the organization is doing as a whole, as well as how the work that goes on in headquarters aligns to the work each chapter is doing locally. Other meetings focused on presentations from a variety of community-based initiatives spearheaded by our board within AIGA Baltimore or other organizations. While we enjoyed opportunities to share the things we love most about the local design community, we found we weren’t spending enough time talking to you about what you wanted.

So, at our most recent community meeting on January 16th, graciously hosted by our friends at SlimTech, in an effort to talk less and do more, we made your interests the focus of the meeting. We started with a Facebook poll to gauge where the discussion interests lie. To those of you who participated, thank you for helping to guide the conversation. After choosing the top four topics from the poll, we used design thinking tools to begin to brainstorm ways in which we could impact designers’ pain points in each area of focus.

Facebook Poll Results

Following a brief kickoff, we asked attendees to jump into action, connecting with their fellow designer and discussing their personal and design-focused hopes and fears for the new year.

AIGA Baltimore President, Joseph Carter-Brown, addresses and prep attendees for the evening's proceedings
AIGA Baltimore President, Joseph Carter-Brown, addresses and preps attendees for the evening’s proceedings.

In this exercise, we discovered some of the common themes on designers’ minds—from hopes for professional growth and making connections within the community to fears regarding world events and maintaining healthy lifestyles. While these hopes and fears were not the intention of the discussion, this broad range of concerns helps us put a finger on the pulse of of our community. Discussing our hopes and fears is also a great way to find allies in the room; because what starts as individuals writing their personal hopes and fears, turns into a group of collaborators, realizing that they’re not alone in their goals or concerns.

Attendees share their hopes and fears for the new year
Attendees found shared themes among their individual hopes and fears for the new year.

Once the attendees completed the hopes and fears activity, we broke into four distinct groups. Each group focused on a different discussion prompt as dictated by our Facebook poll. This is when we began to get a true collaborative feeling for how designers in our community could benefit from involvement with AIGA. We did this by building a prioritization grid to identify some ideas that would be impactful, while also being mindful of the feasibility of any given idea. After lots of collaboration, silent ideation, and group sharing, we settled on a handful of big ideas in our four key discussion areas, with a goal to create more user-driven outcomes for all of our community members.

Collaborating on Big Ideas
Attendees collaborate on some big, impactful ideas.

Below is a list of the big ideas, along with pictures of the final prioritization grids:

Design for Good Big Ideas

  • Empathy/Human-Centered Design Workshops
  • Murals for Community Beautification
  • Career Day Awareness
  • Design for Good Video Series:
    Videos educating designers on pro-bono/community-focused work
  • Designathon for Baltimore Businesses in Need (with appropriate vetting)
After brainstorming Design For Good ideas, attendees grouped common themes, and came up with big impactful ideas

Design + Business Big Ideas

  • “Dear Ellen”(name tbd) Blog/Column (like Dear Abby):
    Q&A advice column (topics could include differences between working in-house vs agency vs freelance, branding a new business, other peoples’ design business experiences)
  • Creative Round Table:
    Event for bringing business leaders and creatives together to discuss topics related to running and working in/for a design business (educate businesses on how to work with designers, collaboration opportunities, workshop on getting start-up funding, bring big names to design community, connections with local businesses, comparing notes with similar businesses/getting advice on processes)

    Design & Business Ideas
    Big Ideas for Design & Business Content

Design + Leadership Big Ideas

  • Workshop with Local Design Leaders:
    How to lead a design team, advocating for design, how to navigate career path in different contexts, how to progress in your career and still design
  • Improv Workshop to Role-Play Design Leadership Situations
    Design Leadership Big Ideas
    Design Leadership Big Ideas

Mentorship Big Ideas:

  • Daily Internships/Adopt a Designer
  • Coffee/Lunch Date or “Speed Dating” to Find a Mentor
  • Designer Exchange Program
  • Portfolio Reviews Targeted at Designers with More Than 5 Years Experience
    Mentorship Big Ideas
    Mentorship Big Ideas

Sharing our creative ideas in a community setting is the first step to taking action, but we want to take that a step further. We want to see your ideas come to life, however AIGA Baltimore is a board of only a few people, and all volunteers at that; so we’re asking the community to work with us. While we want to do everything on this list, we simply cannot do it alone. What we can do is support and empower you, our design community! Let’s work together and make it happen. Shall we? If you see an idea that you can’t wait to help bring to life or want to explore more (or if you know someone who may be able to help push the needle forward), we want to hear from you.

Email info@baltimore.aiga.org and let’s talk about how we can all take ownership in our design community.

Behind Design Week 2017’s Branding; A Discussion With Fastspot

AIGA Baltimore was thrilled when Fastspot agreed to be our Branding Sponsor for Design Week 2017. Their commitment to Baltimore was evident from the beginning, and with this Design Week being a resounding success, we couldn’t have of done it without them.

A critical aspect of communicating Design Week to our membership is a strong brand identity. Since 2013, we have reached out to a local design agency to partner with us and bring Design Week alive visually. Past partners have included Orange Element, Gilah Press + Design, Eye Byte Solutions, and Exit10.

Here we go behind the scenes with our Branding Sponsor, Fastspot, to learn more about their inspiration for this year’s branding for Design Week, their work outside of AIGA Baltimore, and what their company is all about!

What was the inspiration for Fastspot’s Design Week Branding?

A branding project like this one is all about using design and aesthetic choices to bring the spirit of an organization to the surface. The Baltimore design community, which we’re honored to be a part of, is full of creative people exploring, innovating, and pushing in new directions. We wanted to reflect that in a way that was exciting and authentic, and would align well with AIGA’s existing materials. Our designers drew inspiration from the city itself, in abstracted shapes of iconic Baltimore buildings and variations on found letterforms. In the end, the Design Week brand captures the quirk and vibrancy that will be very familiar to AIGA’s audiences.

What were the steps involved in creating the branding?

We begin every project with a kick-off meeting that allows us to better understand the mindset and vision for the project. Time is spent together questioning, brainstorming, and setting a vision for the project, both from a creative and a scoping standpoint. From there, it’s a lot of iteration and collaboration. The “big reveal” moment might be dramatic, but it isn’t necessarily productive. We prioritize working closely with clients to discuss, challenge, and refine the work, so that we’re all in consensus around the finished product.

What was the inspiration for being a part of Design Week 2017?

Fastspot is Baltimore through and through—many of our team members are from Baltimore or have proudly adopted the city. So we jumped at the chance to give back to this community. It’s not unusual for us to work with clients to adapt an existing branding or design system for use in a new medium or for a specific initiative. It was a lot of fun doing so for AIGA.

What was the goal of the Design Week branding?

We wanted to create a design system that breaks down barriers (real and perceived).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Could you explain an exciting Fastspot project completely unrelated to AIGA?

The Ford’s Theatre website redesign was an exciting project and a great challenge.

Ford’s Theatre is a place where the past and present collide—they teach Lincoln’s legacy while preserving the historic theatre that shows new, contemporary performances. We loved immersing ourselves in the history and cultural impact of Ford’s Theatre. During the process we learned it was controversial for Lincoln enjoy theater! It was very uncommon at the time, and he was seen as a rebel for his attendance.

One of the interesting logistical goals of the project was to make online ticketing easier. We worked with the software applications TNEW and Tessitura to make them as user-friendly as possible, something we’re continuing to partner with Ford’s Theatre to refine. A website redesign doesn’t end at site launch, and some of our most successful clients are the ones who become partners that we continue to work with for many years.

What are your typical process steps? Do they differ from AIGA work?

Our process always start with research. We ask hard questions and we do a lot of listening as we seek to uncover the real motivations and challenges that each project contains. We want to understand the potential impact on the institution or organization, and the ways in which we can help create meaningful change. From there, we create foundational strategy before we move into design and (where needed) development. Throughout our process, we’re focused on innovation and collaboration. Great ideas can come from anywhere, at any time, and we’re always ready to pursue them. All of this was reflected in our work with AIGA.

How do you typically find your clients?

Fastspot finds most of our new clients through referrals. Great work and happy clients help bring in more happy clients!

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What’s an ideal day at the office like?

An ideal day at Fastspot is when our team members feel accomplished, whether it’s because of a design breakthrough, a successful presentation, progress on a hard problem, a well-received deliverable, helping a co-worker, etc. 

What is Fastspot’s mission? How did it come about?

“To build a successful company, with great people, who do awesome, creative work, together.” 

Fastspot’s mission partly comes out of our co-founder, Tracey Halvorsen’s background as a painter. She recognizes how important your physical space and who you surround yourself with is to doing your best work. She wanted to bring that sentiment into into the business world, where collaboration and creativity should also be encouraged and acknowledged.

If you could describe your team and work philosophy in 5 words, what would they be?

Challenging, supportive, smart, honest, and brave.

What’s your vision for Baltimore? For Maryland?

Our vision is to create more of a draw to this area, whether it’s Baltimore or Maryland as a whole. We want Maryland to be a place where creative, innovative people want to live and work. 

We like that Baltimore isn’t New York or Silicon Valley, there’s opportunity to have a really great life in Maryland. The lifestyle here emphasizes a work-life that balance, which makes it a place where people can truly thrive. 

We’d like to see more local initiatives to help kids get into creative and technology fields, and support for businesses that want to grow here. We hope the city and state can have the kind of leaders who look forward to new ways of leading and governing. We’re in a new time, and need progressive leadership.

Navigating Success and Failure as a Design Entrepreneur: Advice from Alyson Beaton

Alyson Beaton is a successful designer and entrepreneur. For more than a decade, she’s designed and launched several of her own product lines, including Lille Huset, Grow Books Press, and Marketote. On Wednesday, October 21, Alyson joined us for a breakfast talk about her experiences as an entrepreneur and designer, and the processes of defining both success and failure.

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As an entrepreneur, the first thing to do is to find your inspiration. Ask yourself what your goal is. Once you’ve defined your success, you’ll be able to evaluate the outcome. When you figure out what is and isn’t working, you’ll learn important lessons about your next steps. Failure is not necessarily something to be afraid of, as it can teach you when something needs to change, or when to just let go. It can, however, be hard to stay focused in the face of failure. But perseverance will pay off with opportunities not otherwise available. In Alyson’s case, she was able to meet her goals on Kickstarter, but the learning curve to get there was huge.

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Success is more than just figuring out what not to do. Here are some tips from Alyson to help guide you to successfully designing and selling a product:

  1. Remember to pay yourself. Your time is valuable and should be budgeted for.
  2. Communicate to the intended customer through product packaging. A design that appeals to that person will ensure your message is received.
  3. Research trade shows as much as possible. This research will lead you to the right stores for your product and to important connections with people who can support you.
  4. Test the market for your product. Study the people who you intend to be the consumers to make sure your product fits their needs and desires.

Becoming a successful entrepreneur and designer is no small feat. Some measure of failure along the path is inevitable. As Alyson has learned, failure is not to be avoided, but welcomed as a learning opportunity. Learning from your mistakes and following the right steps will ultimately lead to the success you set out for.


Photos taken by Courtney Glancy

Mitchell Cole is the web sales manager at Service Photo Supply. Most of his free time is spent indulging in some sort of gaming – basking in the glow of a computer screen or the clattering of dice. Critical hit! Find him on Twitter at @mc_mittens.

Mental Models, Design Patterns, and the Norman Door: A Night of UX Design

Exactly what is user experience (UX) design? In a hands-on workshop lead by Phil Bolles, a DC-based designer and educator, that very question was asked to the crowd of 20+ attendees. Responses included “the easiest way to get from Point A to Point B” and references to the Norman Door, but ultimately, attendees agreed that the essence of UX is asking the questions, “Who is this for?” and “What are they trying to do?”

While the role of a UX designer is multidisciplinary, the ultimate goal is to be an advocate for the user. How one goes about this, with respect to web and mobile applications, was explored through rich discussions, activities, and real world examples.

One of those examples was an exercise in developing the mental model of a pizza tracker app. The goal of the mental model is not to illustrate how ordering a pizza via an app works, but how the user thinks that it works. Through this exercise, we were able to anticipate a user’s goals and tasks as they walk through the ordering process.

In the end, attendees were left with not only an excellent list of UX resources (see our list below), but also a deeper knowledge of design patterns, qualitative insight and mental models, and an understanding of how they all these things fit into the role of a UX designer.

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What are your favorite UX resources? Share them with us on Twitter!

UX Resources:

DeDesign the Web
http://dedesigntheweb.com/
Test your knowledge of popular websites just by looking at the wireframes

The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman
http://www.jnd.org/books/design-of-everyday-things-revised.html
Donald Norman’s book on the good–and bad–design theories behind everyday products

Designer Hangout CO
https://www.designerhangout.co/
Join 5800+ UXers from around the world on Slack to discuss user experience.

Apps

UX Companion
http://www.uxcompanion.com/

POP App (Prototyping on Paper)
https://popapp.in

Books

A Book Apart
http://abookapart.com/

Rosenfeld Media
http://rosenfeldmedia.com/

User Experience Team of One by Leah Boule
http://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/the-user-experience-team-of-one/

Podcasts

Accidental Tech Podcast
http://atp.fm/

The Big Web Show
http://5by5.tv/bigwebshow

Let’s Make Mistakes
http://www.muleradio.net/mistakes/

A Responsive Web Design Podcast
http://responsivewebdesign.com/podcast/

Other

A List Apart
http://alistapart.com/

Boxes and Arrows
http://boxesandarrows.com/

Daring Fireball
http://daringfireball.net/

Jesse James Garret’s visual vocabulary
http://www.jjg.net/ia/visvocab/

LukeW Ideation + Design
http://www.lukew.com/

Nielsen Norman Group
http://www.nngroup.com/


Shannon Crabill is a HTML Email Developer at T. Rowe Price. Outside of the Internet you can find her riding her motorcycle and binge-watching home improvement shows on HGTV. Tweet her at @shannon_crabill.