After Making and Thinking, Now the Doing

There’s a final tradition at every AIGA conference I love attending, and one that most people who were chugging 60oz “bottomless” beers on Beale Street probably didn’t make it to—the Sunday morning Town Hall. At this intimate gathering, AIGA staff and board members take questions about the state of the organization. It’s a great chance to not only reflect back upon the programming of the past few days, but to get answers about the future, right from the source.

Ric Grefé opening the discussion at the Town Hall meeting

As AIGA executive director Ric Grefé noted first, there was one fact quite obvious to everyone in attendance at Make/Think: Registration was lower for this conference compared to two years ago, down about 30%. Only about 1300 designers attended this year’s conference compared to over 2000 in Denver. But actually, that lower number is standard for all conferences this year. AIGA believes this is part of a general shift towards smaller conferences—the big 4000 person conferences are gone. “It’s not because we can’t attract them,” says Ric, but because of economic issues and changing cultural and technological issues. But that doesn’t mean every big event will scale back. Design is a young profession and still needs to prove itself to the greater population, to show that design has cultural importance. And that’s why events like the AIGA Design Legends Gala, which honored mainstage speaker Carin Goldberg among others a few weeks ago, is important not only because it shows the relevance of the discipline, it actually raises quite a bit of money for AIGA.

But as conferences go, look for more specialized regional events like Compostmodern and the Y Conference, or ones like GAIN that can reach outside the design world into the business world and help bring understanding of the discipline to a wider audience. In light of the fact that not as many people can afford to attend a conference, AIGA has also stepped up their video production, so now look for “TED Talk quality” video online soon (awesome!). I, for one, think the scaling back of events like this is a good trend. Some conferences have gotten far too big. But what’s a good size? Ric Grefé considers this definition: “Where you can see the people you want to meet with, and then it’s small enough that you can still meet with them.” I think that was true for this year. Memphis felt just right when it came to numbers. The lines of designers who waited to talk to the most popular mainstage speakers, otherwise known as “The Two Stefans,” Sagmeister and Bucher, were long, but not overly long.

Talking to Stefan Sagmeister at the Design Observer party

When a speaker like Bennington College president Elizabeth Coleman gave one of the most talked about presentations at the conference, it’s obvious that education for both designers and at the K-12 level is a white-hot topic. Several people at the Town Hall asked for more educational support, and the AIGA design educators’ chair Louise Sandhaus, directed them to a new site, designeducators.aiga.org. In addition to the ongoing community conversations, Adobe and AIGA sponsor two education conferences every two years, and the next one will be Response/Ability on May 13-14 in Toledo, Ohio, followed by another one in Raleigh, NC in the fall. One question that was resonant throughout the conference was how to encourage all designers to begin and sustain the ever-important self-initiated work at a very young age. Both Daniel Eatock‘s and Jill Greenberg‘s talks proved that some of the most fruitful and powerful work—as well as the most entertaining—comes out of this experimentation.

Daniel Eatock experimenting with students

In the sustainability realm, a new set of guidelines called the Living Principles was announced and launched Friday by the Center for Sustainable Design. This new set of principles is built around the idea is that sustainable criteria isn’t just environmental and it examines the various guidelines for other organizations that are also guiding social responsibility, economy, society and culture (the traditional “triple-bottom line” + cultural sustainability). “We’re trying to make sure that the U.S. design community is actually part of the global design community,” says Ric. “We’ve been so focused on economic success we’ve become isolated.” By publishing these standards, AIGA also hopes that they can help designers educate their clients. “This is what the profession expects from itself,” says Ric, but it can also be used to tell other corporations, “this is what you should expect from design.” This could push forth more of the work being done by people like R/GA’s Nick Law, who spoke about rich designed experiences with a social agenda for Nike and the Ad Council that doesn’t fit the traditional perception of “sustainability” but drives change in a positive way.

Just the fact that a strictly interactive figure like Google’s Marissa Mayer was so prominently represented at AIGA’s conference is a huge step in showing that the traditional graphic design limitations no longer apply to the organization. There seems to be a general concern about continuing to bring in people from outside industries that don’t identify with traditional print industries, or even how to attract people who don’t think of themselves as graphic designers. AIGA has resolved to include non-print practitioners but also pledges to focus on younger designers. “If we focus on older designers as the center of gravity we miss the changes that are inevitably coming,” says Ric. Not to say that the elders will be ignored:  One idea AIGA has considered is to have younger mentors for older designers. How fun would that be? I say that initiative should be headed up by power duo of designer Charles Harrison and current student Ethan Bodnar, who spoke together about designing in two different eras of the industry.

David Butler, Global Design Director, Coca-Cola

But design, as Coke’s David Butler reminded us, is only getting bigger, and designers will need to learn how to design across boundaries they never could have imagined before. AIGA is proud to be aligned with ICOGRADA, the international group of designers which allows them to share information and practices on a much larger scale. The Cross Cultural Design Group (XCD), and chair Zelda Harrison, looks for other opportunities to bring other countries and cultures into the design conversation. ICOGRADA’s summit will be held in China next week, where AIGA has a strong presence with their AIGA China office.

Finally, taking a cue from Roger Martin’s incredible talk about why designers make such good problem solvers, there are a group of designers working hard to create a real presence in design within the U.S. government. A National Design Policy would bring together designers working in all design government agencies to find out how they approach service design, possibly culminating in a conference. This happened in the ‘70s but it has lost momentum, so AIGA is hoping to be a major part of getting this group united, which can hopefully bring the high-level design thinking concept to be applied to policy in the government. As far as proving value to our own country, Design for Democracy is being used for election ballot redesign, and continues to be the greatest way to demonstrate how design can help society. In addition to the ballots, Design for Democracy is working on redesigning the veteran experience, as well as a “nutrition facts” standard for credit card contracts and mortgages.

AIGA President Debbie Millman addresses the Town Hall meeting participants.

While we only have a Town Hall meeting every two years, Ric reminded us, you’ve got our email addresses. And there’s a special focus on inclusiveness and connectivity from AIGA president Debbie Millman, who wants to explore having more meaningful conversations using social networks, a true embrace of technology using whatever tools we have on hand to make people feel like their voices are heard. And even Ric Grefé is on Twitter (although I don’t see a post yet, but I’m optimistic!). Just like 69-year-old former Stax Records chairman and recent joiner of Twitter Al Bell put it so eloquently in the opening talk:  “If we follow each other and keep communicating, good things could happen.”

Jill Greenberg is The Manipulator

You’ve definitely seen photos by Jill Greenberg, razor-sharp, deeply saturated portraits, often with an angelic halo embracing her subjects. But these photos have also been the center of controversy, like when the ardent democrat took unflattering photos from a shoot with John McCain and altered them for her own website in a devastatingly witty series that made McCain look quite literally like a monster. The right came after her, claiming she tricked him into the shots, which she doesn’t deny. She shows her actual, unsigned contract with The Atlantic for the McCain shoot to prove that she didn’t actually do anything wrong, and she actually did give publication some attention (by the way, she made no money, was only supposed to be reimbursed for her materials—which she never was).

Jill Greenberg discusses the controversy and motivations behind the infamous McCain photo shoot.

Although so many of her portraits make those depicted in them look heroic, she is actually hired quite often to make people look ugly, she says. And ironically, exactly a year after the John McCain fiasco she was called in by GQ to shoot another person who disagreed with her politics: Glenn Beck (even though she didn’t think he’d agree in a million years—the photos eventually got picked up on the cover of Time). At that shoot, she made Glenn Beck cry, which was similar to another series she did that was fraught with controversy, End Times, where portraits of crying children that were named things like “Four More Years” and “Torture” to make statements about the Bush administration. She flips back and forth between wet-lashed children, their tears dripping onto their bare chests, and Glenn Beck’s overdramatic sobs (a video shows that she uses Vicks Vapor Rub right below the eyes to get grown men to cry), juxtaposing the two projects.

Greenberg brings the best out of Glenn Beck

Jill Greenberg and her crying babies

But where Glenn Beck’s portrait made it onto the cover of Time with nary a stir, in the case of End Times, a blogger came after her for supposedly traumatizing the children, resulting in a global fracas. “I knew they were powerful images but she didn’t expect the level of vitrol,” she says. “Apparently it’s controversial for children to cry? I don’t know, mine do it so much.” So she moved on to shooting bears, which were “somehow more safe” than children. She rounds out the session with a montage of bears, followed by some from her monkey series. For each, it’s apparent that her ability to bring out the good or evil in a human subject can also be used to give animals almost human-like personality. No word on how or if she’s successful in getting monkeys to cry. Her new book, Bear Portraits will be out this November.

David Butler: Massive Change, Pop Edition

When David Butler came to Coca-Cola, it was as their first global director of design, ever. It’s not an easy task:  A quarter of the earth’s population drinks Coke products every day so maintaining that red and white across so many cultural lines calls for some pretty drastic designing. He is carrying a Diet Coke, which he slyly puts atop the podium.

David Butler, Global Director of Design, Coca-Cola

As a designer, the “preciousness” and the “smallness” of design is what frustrates him. He opted out of “Design” in 1999 and moved towards systems thinking, which is more results-oriented. “You can’t look at results without looking at behavior,” says David. “And you can’t look at behavior without looking at structure.” When Coke called, he honestly didn’t think the structure would be able to change to support new results. He wasn’t sure they were ready to take such a holistic approach.

Redesigning design.

Just a few hints at how massively massive Coke is:

450 brands
206 countries
1.6 million servings a minute
A company valued at $68 billion

David Butler breaks down the numbers

So designing for Coke really is like managing a massive system. Small decisions like paper and typography are magnified so much, into such insane applications, with seemingly so little control, he needed a different approach to his designing. “Think Do” is that new approach.

But David’s not going to talk much about Coke actually (for that, see the article in Fast Company’s Master of Design issue with his face on it that’s plastered all over the conference). He wants to use this time to tell us that in the U.S. he doesn’t see much driving innovation in the U.S. He was upset that at the National Design Awards luncheon at the White House, more people were focused on Michelle Obama’s yellow dress than the reason designers were there. Channeling Bruce Mau, he challenges us to look ahead 20 years: 7.5 people call the planet home, 1.1 billion more people added to the middle class, 1/3 of the world’s population are teens. Maybe we all need a new approach, because design in the U.S. today will not be able to scale to support that kind of change. So first, he calls for a move from Art + Design to Design + Innovation. And instead of creating ideas, create value. And a move from national blogs to national policy. From products or anything that’s physical to a morecollective goal. A focus on “we.” We are the change we’ve been waiting for, he says. And David Butler has a sip of his Diet Coke and smiles.

David Butler, Global Director of Design, Coca-Cola

During the Q&A, Kurt tried to get David to chime in on the controversial and slightly odd story of Pepsi’s recent rebranding. David declined to comment, only saying this: It’s hard to make things look simple, but it’s really hard to get things to be simple.”

Charles Harrison and Ethan Bodnar: Two Design Careers Converge

Charles Harrison was an industrial designer for Sears starting in the 1960s who designed things like the View-Master, the gas-molded polypropylene trash can, and hundreds of other appliances and powertools, from Kenmore fridges to a portable phonograph. “It’s not how I became a great designer,” he says. “It’s becoming, I’m still becoming.” He grew up in Louisiana in a segregated community and attended The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, which just happened to be one of the only schools that offered degrees in industrial design at the time. He tried to get a job at Sears in the 1950s they would not hire him because he was black. But a few years later, they did offer him a job, and when he finally landed at Sears it was the largest manufacturer of products in the world. He traveled extensively, over saw the design of over 700 products. His book, A Life’s Design, is an amazing journey through his years in the profession, ending with being honored by both AIGA and the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Awards for lifetime achievement awards.

Charles Harrison

Harrison designed the iconic Viewmaster

As comparison, we have Ethan Bodnar, a 19 year old. I’ll say that again. 19 years old. The Hartford Art School student thanks AIGA for giving him community and connecting him with other designers. The child of a graphic designer, he started his own layout work using Adobe Pagemaker and designing logos. In high school he discovered the online community of designers. He even put the word KERN on his backpack and happily explained to people what it meant. In his short career, he’s done signage for his high school, posters, an art installation, and the launch of the blog Synthesis. But it’s the personal projects that really drive him and because he loves them so much, HE HAS ALSO WRITTEN A BOOK. At 19. Repeat: He is 19 years old. It’s called Creative Grab Bag: Inspiring Challenges for Designers, Artists and Illustrators and it’s a collection of exercises that help launch those personal projects.

Ethan Bodnar’s first book, Creative Grab Bag

Check out our videos with Charles Harrison and Ethan Bodnar for more great stories from their careers.