Michael Aleo recently wrote a post that stirred up some feelings that I have about AIGA. That is that AIGA is an organization that claims to represent professional designers but doesn’t really accurately represent the current landscape of the design industry.

Michael’s post details an e-mail conversation he had with a judge from the DC AIGA50 design competition. For full disclosure I don’t know Michael (though I reached out to him with a few background questions on his post) and the fact that he was entered in the competition may lead some to consider his point of view to be biased. I did not enter the competition and I am not currently a paying member of AIGA but have been in the past. I have judged a competition for another organization and served on the board of the Art Directors Club of DC. I do not currently live in the DC area but work for an agency headquartered there. I am fully aware that his post may not represent every angle of the story. I invite other sides of this story to respond, and I would love it if someone from AIGA would comment and be more transparent about what lead to the comments made by this judge.

Michael said what a lot of professional web designers think and risked making some folks mad. He backed it up with some pretty revealing comments from an AIGA competition judge.

To illustrate his point Michael talks about how the AIGADC 50 competition judges chose to recognize wrapping paper made by a design agency (for themselves) over several website designs that included information architecture and complex goal oriented problem solving done for clients. When the AIGA judge was asked about this her comments (According to Aleo) were:

“The wrapping paper was at least a relief from some of the downright bad work that was entered.
Cant say it was brilliant/groundbreaking/useful but at least it had something redeeming about it. The interactive web stuff you showed me was pedestrian and just plan bad design. This stuff should be smart, beautiful and content friendly. Ugh!”

In Aleo’s examples I can’t say that any of the interactive web work was groundbreaking but if you look at it from the angle of 50 pieces representing the DC area design, they are strong representation of solid well done web work done FOR CLIENTS in the DC area.

So, Why the hell do I care about what AIGA chooses to showcase as good design?

AIGA represents the professional design industry. Professional being defined by Merrium-Webster as “participating for gain or livelihood in an activity or field of endeavor often engaged in by amateurs”.

AIGA is seen by outside organizations as being the representative for those who pay their bills designing “stuff” as the judge so respectfully put it. Hey, I design interactive “stuff” for my livelihood, so AIGA claiming to represent me to the world is MY business.

AIGA’s website says:

“AIGA sets the national agenda for the role of design in economic, social, political, cultural and creative contexts.”

Whoa: that’s pretty powerful. This organization influences THE AGENDA for the role of what I do in just about every other applicable or important context of the NATION.

Most importantly it is the organization that design students look to for guidance and examples of quality standard practices within our industry. It sets the tone for future designers and how they will contribute to our industry.

Michael’s article describes AIGA as being “old” and that is an issue because it is perpetuating a cycle of setting unrealistic expectations about what the actual professional landscape of design looks like. As Michael points out: the 50 pieces of design chosen to represent the DC area only included two actual websites. The professional association of designers is telling the world and especially design instructors and students that the standards for what represents good design is mostly print in the DC area. Even though the landscape of profitable design employment is a very different ratio.

I took a look at the AIGA design jobs site and filtered available positions to show DC area design jobs (since the article was about AIGADC). Out of the 16 open positions listed that were dated between February 21 and April 4th nine listed “web design” as one of the job functions (if not THE core job function). Out of those 9 a couple even included “web development”.

To a student looking to start a career in the design industry the competition results set expectations that in order to do “award winning work” you need to do print work. Students striving to be exceptional become frustrated at the job landscape and give up on our industry. I have seen it happen with my former classmates. Call me sentimental, but I mourn the loss of great design talent to unreasonable expectations set by the leaders in our design industry. I want to see talented designers excel and elevate the quality of overall work being produced by our community.

University design programs also look to AIGA for guidance on shaping their programs. Universities are producing qualified and hirable print designers at a much higher rate than they are producing hirable-out-of-school web designers. If we want to see web education change we have to look to organizations like AIGA to help set the standards to change them.

As a former student who was determined to make my fanciful lifelong dream of supporting myself as a “Professional Designer” come true, I am greatly concerned with AIGA claiming to represent the professional design landscape as being so print oriented. They are building expectations amongst very talented young designers that making good design is mostly being a print designer.

I am also really concerned with the tone and attitude that this judge had about the work coming out of DC. That negative tone is “old”, get with the program. the web design industry is OPEN. The new design industry is flourishing on the web through open attitudes and positive contributions. There is no place for negative elitist bullshit in the future of design.

There was a judge on the three person panel who specialized in web design at a large agency. Michael says that he reached out to him for comment with no response. Because I have had prior experience as a judge for a competition I imagine there may be more to the story and am very interested in hearing it.

I would love to see AIGA put more effort into diversifying their group of judges to include more web industry leaders and attracting a larger submission pool of quality interactive work. Lots of traditional advertising and design organizations have done a great job with this and you guys being the largest in the industry can reach out and do the same. If you are an AIGA board member here are some suggestions, take them with a grain of salt because I personally know from experience it is much easier said than done:

1. Look for potential judges who are doing good work, sharing ideas and progressing the evolution of the web industry. Don’t know where to find those folks? Check the lineups at web industry conferences. http://futureinsightslive.com, http://aneventapart.com, http://valiocon.com, http://interlinkconference.com, http://convergese.com.
2. Market the competition itself in a way that will encourage a lot of folks to visit the winning entry’s agency’s/designer’s sites. Wonder why so many CSS Galleries get tons of entries? Because the featured designs receive a lot of traffic. Websites are visible to the general public already, up the stakes a little bit. Work to develop relationships with high profile websites to promote the competition. Sites like: http://www.thefwa.com, http://www.smashingmagazine.com, http://www.netmagazine.com, http://unmatchedstyle.com and maybe even http://dribbble.com.
3. Create value beyond prestige. What do you get for entering your site in the competition? Useful (constructive) feedback on how to be a better designer from the judges could be a way to achieve this. Get creative on the benefits of being part of a competition like this. Most web designers don’t have to pay money to get good work in front of a lot of people… think outside of the box on incentives.
4. Make it worth a potential web judge’s time. You might not have a huge budget to pay out, but make sure you are at least offering them the same as your traditional design judges. A featured Interview or bio on your site to provide context of what makes them knowledgeable in their subject area is a minimum. If you can afford it, bring them in for the judging, a dinner, or to do a presentation at your chapter. Make being involved in judging a positive and worthwhile way to give back.
5. Establish judging criteria and be transparent. I have judged a competition before and the lack of this can really contribute to confusion and misrepresentation of final winning results. Web and Print design are apples and oranges, acknowledge that and give your judges some context to what the winning entries should represent. Have the judges write comments about what made the winning pieces “winners”.

Before I conclude I want to make it clear that I am not criticizing the hard working volunteers who work to make AIGA run. Volunteering is no joke, it’s a lot of work to make a competition happen.Volunteering for any industry organization can be an enormous undertaking and the more industry folks who pitch in make it a lighter load for everyone. If you are reading this and never considered volunteering, now is the time! No I am not criticizing the volunteers, I am asking them to carefully consider who and what they chose to represent as the best of “Professional Design” in today’s industry landscape.

With all said, I give a shit about what AIGA does because it is a large part of my industry ecosystem, or at least markets itself to as a representative of what I do to influence other aspects of “THE NATION“. I look forward to the day when web designers feel like they are a real part of the design community that AIGA represents. Or if that never happens when the web design community decides to organize our collective positive powers to be the official “professional association for design”.

As many can tell you, SXSW is what you make of it. I have attended some really great conferences in the last year but none have replaced the opportunities you have to connect with uber amazing people like SXSW. Not only does Austin provide a great campus for meeting new people, SXSW gives you the timeline to make something of those opportunities. Conversations I took part in ranged from design inspiration to web education to fostering creativity on a design team. I even got in some nerdy web typography talk with Yves Peters.It was sort of fantastic.

The conversations I had and panels I watched got me thinking about a lot. Some takeaways were personal and others were themes for our industry to embrace. This is what I left with:

• Always recognize great work, especially if you wish you did it.
• Sharing takes courage, let’s promote positivity to lift our community up.
• Humble designers (& developers) are the most fun to be around.
• Respect and encourage those who really do dance like no one is looking.
• Most web designers face similar challenges, let’s work together on the solutions.
• Hard work sometimes gets buried under politics; give greatness the benefit of the doubt.
• Competitiveness between web designers is toxic. It only breeds pettiness.
• When in doubt: More cat photos.
• Worcestershire sauce might be the missing ingredient in my Bloody Marys.
• Hydration helps sleep deprivation.
• Surround yourself with people who are better than you.
• The best BBQ in SF will never come close to anything in Austin.
• The definition of innovation depends on your perspective.
• Good things happen outside of your comfort zone.

Many thanks to all the great people who shared their time with me at the event, it was all very very badass.

I like to blog about design. The tricky thing about that is that it is hard to blog about design when you don’t feel great about the design of your blog. My “blog design complex” has been a big hurdle for me over the past year. It inhibits my blogging.

Blogging is a critical piece of the web design industry, sharing knowledge helps elevate the quality of work within our industry. I have learned a lot about design both by blogging and by reading other people’s blogs. The web community is in a bit of a lull, lately. We share information more frequently over twitter and dribble. And while I think both of those methods are great, they don’t replace the sharing of more in-depth ideas that require the longer format of a blog post.

There is no law that says that as a designer you have to design your own blog or that the design has to be an accurate reflection of your personality or capabilities. But, for my blog it should be. And while this design was an amazing achievement when I launched it, it is so far out of date now, I have a hard time relating to it. It is a giant time capsule of where I was as a designer back in February of 2009, and while I am very proud of it for that, it is not me now.

While it shouldn’t impede my blogging, it has. I have no shortage of blog post ideas, there is so much to share in our industry. And man, do I want to hear about what others are doing, too! My design almost prevented me from posting this article but because I had a lot of encouragement, I managed to finally go forth with it and hopefully people overlook the design when reading it. I have been hard at work on an entirely separate site on the subject (check out http://styletil.es) because I really would rather not send folks to my blog.

For the second year Chris Shiflett is organizing ”Ideas of March”, an effort to encourage the resurgence of blogging in the web community. Not only am I taking the pledge to blog more regularly, but I am also pledging to redesign and launch a new version of this blog before the end of the year. Hopefully sooner. In the meantime I will get over my distaste for my own narrow columns, image heavy navigation, and unresponsive design I will blog!

If you’d like to participate, here’s how:

• Write a post called Ideas of March.
• Write about why you like blogs.
• If you don’t already blog regularly, pledge to blog more the rest of the month.
• Share your thoughts on Twitter with the #ideasofmarch hashtag.

I urge you to also take the pledge to blog more often and share awesomeness about web design!

“Close your eyes and feel their presence; channel their emotions” is how my figure drawing instructor would kick off many mornings of our 3.5 hour long studio session. It took me several semesters of softly shading tummy pooches and abstracting rounded shoulders to learn that the most engaging depictions of the human form weren’t clear representations of what was in front of me, but deep abstractions of lines and light.

People all react to visual elements differently, as designers we try and create compositions that communicate the intended message to the widest audience of people, while also appeasing our clients. It’s our responsibility to balance the parameters and opinions of our clients with the overall communication goals of a design. While there are lots of tactics for doing this I am convinced that understanding the psychology of visual perception (the “why”s) carve a faster path to quality end results more-so than the “hows”.

We have all had clients say amazing things to us in meetings, unexpected, glorious and sometimes confusing things. Some people get frustrated or confused at unexpected reactions to their creations, but I revel in them. Perhaps it’s my curious nature, but I dig deeper into the human psyche with every unexpected comment.

That brings me to the time when a client told me “That (data) table is SEXY!”. This comment has had me thinking since the infamous comp presentation. If the page had featured a large image of a person or clear reference to human characteristics, it would have been less surprising;, “sexy” generally applies human physical attraction. This wasa full page of tabbed data tables, gridded, geometric, and full of numbers; the content was robotic. This gentleman was implying that a composition of gradients, lines, and type weren’t just communicating to him, they were seductive. They made him feel! His perception is relates to those same principles that make abstract elements communicate the human form.

What exactlyprovoked such an unusual, yet delightful reaction a design? Can we leverage known psychological reactions to help our clients tell their stories through web design?

Anthropomorphic Form is the mimicry of the human form and in web design we can use it to abstractly “seduce” our users. Rounded corners, gradients, and subtle nods to the elements that we find attractive in each other can be very powerful. They are the building blocks of the human form boiled down to it’s simplest parts.

It’s a powerful principle that is commonly used in product design. Look at the shape of the Coca-cola bottle and Method cleaning products. Both are examples of how the abstract mimicry of the human form can engage users. The Coca-cola bottle shape has become as iconic as their logo and used to be nicknamed the “Mae West” because it was rumored to be shaped based on her hips. Have you ever bought dish soap or toilet bowl cleaner because of the appeal of the product shape?

Executing a design using Anthropomorphic Form is one thing, but it is also important for us to articulate how these principles support our client’s and users’s goals. While the “whys” of design are important increasing more engaging designs they also make critical tools in our arsenal when communicating with our clients. When was the last time you sold a client a font choice with “I just liked it”? You didn’t just like it! Every decision is based on a complex thought process, whether you realize it or not. THERE was a reason, start to understand the “why’s” in your design decisions and you will see a change in how the design process works for you.

Design is a way of life, a point of view. It involves the whole complex of visual communications: talent, creative ability, manual skill, and technical knowledge. Aesthetics and economics, technology and psychology are intrinsically related to the process.

- Paul Rand Graphis, 1981

Happy Cog posted a link to the most fantastic document; a compilation of Paul Rand quotes assembled by Steven Heller. There are so many nuggets of wisdom, go download it at once!

I have been very fortunate to find and get involved with the web design community since attending SXSW in 2006, but more recently I have been meeting a lot of wonderful folks in the Drupal community. In 2009 I started working at Phase2 Technology, an Alexandria Virginia web agency that specializes in open source development and is known for working with Drupal. Phase2 is passionate about the community; being involved and giving back is an integral part of our daily work lives. Community involvement is something I value a lot, so working with a group of people who honestly share that vision is a real treat. The Drupal community has greeted me with open arms and I am starting to understand the challenges they have when promoting visual design amongst those looking to use the platform.

At Phase2 most of the sites that I design are built on Drupal because it is a good fit for the types of clients that we have. I have designed websites for Wordpress, Expression Engine, and other platforms and have found that my design process is CMS or platform agnostic. There may be a different set of design challenges, but how you solve those challenges is relatively similar. It is all about problem solving… which is what designers do. So why is there this weird stigma that Drupal sucks for designers? Why aren’t there tons of killer site designs powered by Drupal?

What I have found is that Drupal is much a group of people as it is a platform and the community is hungry to learn about design. What is fascinating about open source is that the end product is a direct result of the interests and efforts of those involved, so if design is something Drupal needs to beef up on… then more designers need to get involved! Over the past few years this effort has been really ramping up with the help of a lot of super talented and motivated folks. It isn’t something that is going to happen overnight but in the last year it has come a long way.

Drupal has two big conferences a year to help educate and promote involvement in the community. I attended DrupalCon San Francisco a little over a year ago and there was an interest in design but nothing like the full track of design related programming that they had this year at DrupalCon Chicago. Even the conference collateral was badass this year. In Chicago I was honored to be on a panel about Design Thinking with some of the most talented movers and shakers in the community. Steve Fisher organized it and he invited me,

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