Poster design by @DavidAirey

Once again the Twitter-sphere is crackling over a controversial spec work story—this time originating from a somewhat surprising source: the Obama election campaign. The campaign posted a call for “poster submissions from artists across the country illustrating why we support President Obama’s plan to create jobs now, and why we’ll re-elect him to continue fighting for jobs for the next four years.” The irony here is rich.

Clearly this is an ethical misstep by the Obama campaign, but one that seems borne from ignorance rather than malice. As with other recent examples like the Huffington Post logo competition, I tend to favor the rhetoric of opportunity rather than the rhetoric of shame. I would encourage the campaign to view this moment as an opportunity to connect with an important constituency—the community of professional designers—and engage in a healthy dialogue about the value of design and the importance of strong, mutually beneficial professional relationships (not to mention paying jobs). Likewise, designers should seize the opportunity to sharpen our articulation of the value of what we do and to reconnect with our own networks using this as a living case study.

AIGA has a clear position on the issue of spec work that states that professional designers should be compensated fairly for their work. However, I also believe that designers must be careful to focus on the value of design rather than getting distracted by a debate about the evils of crowdsourcing and social media. These forces are here to stay, and this is a battle we will never win.

Jobs’ influence stretches far beyond the “doing” of design—the devices and tools that help us do our job. His elevation of design as a central strategic component of business has opened a seat at the corporate table for designers of all disciplines. While we still face a tall challenge in making the case for the value of design in the business setting, Apple—led by Jobs—has become the case study that we’ve always lacked. Now the C-suite demands to “be like Apple,” and they know that designers are the ones to make that happen.

This is an important time for designers to be able to clearly articulate our unique value in developing creative ways to live healthier. The challenges in healthcare are massive and a design-driven approach—within a multi-disciplinary setting—can yield possibilities that are invisible through traditional approaches. It will be exciting to see what the leaders in this vital space are working on.

In addition to Transform, I have a busy travel and presentation itinerary in the coming months, including:

Designing Change. Changing Design
AIGA Kansas City
Monday, September 19

Merge Mashup
AIGA Cleveland
Friday, September 23

Elevate Series
AIGA South Dakota
Tuesday, September 27

From Understanding to Design and Back Again
Cumulus Conference
Denver, CO
September 29-October 2

Thanks to my friends Wendy Ruyle and Diana Lillicrap at 5by5 Design for inviting me to guest-blog on their site—check out my post here for more on Birmingham and Design for Good. And for more from Birmingham, here’s a link to the Flickr site for the Summit.

I was introduced to Sylvia several years ago by designer Katie Osborn, who worked closely with Sylvia. We instantly connected around our mutual passion for the possibilities designers have to improve the patient experience in healthcare. Whether you knew Sylvia Harris or not, your experience as a designer has been positively impacted by her—all too short—time with us.

Jessica Helfand was with Sylvia when she collapsed, and shared this eloquent remembrance on Design Observer. AIGA also posted a thoughtful piece in her honor.

Despite these undeniable assets, AIGA as an institution is a macrocosm of the professional experience many designers are currently facing. Filled with creativity, energy, intelligence, and potential, AIGA must find a way to adapt to an environment that is evolving before our very eyes. Unless it remains relevant to designers and to the broader community AIGA will fizzle and fade. It is this challenge—and massive opportunity—that fuels me as I look ahead over the next two years.

I want to pay special respect to the outgoing AIGA board members during this transition, your leadership has been exemplary. To outgoing president Debbie Millman, I am in awe of your energy and passion—you are a gift to our community. To the incoming and returning board, chapter leadership, and national office staff, I am eager to collaborate with you as we seize this amazing opportunity!

Below is an excerpt from the comments I made at the AIGA Leadership Retreat in Minneapolis last month.

“This is an amazing time to be a designer. The pace of change in business, and culture is blinding, but for people with the right skills and creativity and vision, that wild change can mean an awesome opportunity to change the world around us. Designers have that skill, creativity and vision. But we cannot assume that we can seize this opportunity by working in the same way we have always worked. This is true as we build our individual careers and design practices but it’s also true as we build AIGA as an organization.  With AIGA approaching its 100^th anniversary we have a rare opportunity—actually I’m going to rephrase that—we have an imperative to rethink what AIGA can be in this new and exciting time. To reconnect with our traditional audiences, but also to envision what new audiences we can attract. And to reposition AIGA to be a relevant, essential, and central player in this amazing time.

The work we’ve done in the last few days has been incredible but this…is the easy part. The challenge comes Monday morning when we start making these ideas happen on the ground in our communities. I am so psyched to take on that challenge with you all. Let’s have a blast together tonight, and then let’s get to work and make this thing happen.”

The application deadline for the 2011 ITM program is July 15. The application process is remarkably simple and streamlined, hence it’s a great opportunity for designers new to social change space to test the waters. One of the requirements of the program is that designers partner with an established non-profit organization on their proposal.

Here’s a link to a “behind the scenes” video from the 2010 judging, produced by Arvi Raquel-Santos of Weymouth Design.

Check out all of my Parse posts here.

The Faculty Forum—attended by more than 30 design educators from a variety of public, private, traditional, and for-profit institutions—was kicked off with an invigorating and provocative keynote presentation by Tom Fisher, Dean of the College of Design at the University of Minnesota. Tom took us on a fascinating tour of the challenges and opportunities of design education in a time of change, in part by reflecting on a previous time of change—the invention of the printing press in the mid-1400s. Fisher emphasized this challenge by pointing out how most design students now are digital natives, “it’s almost as if our students are natives in a different land.”

AIGA Minnesota President Seth Johnson picked up on this thread of Tom Fisher’s remarks by elaborating on the significant challenges present for design educators, “The 30,000-foot view provided by Tom Fischer was inspiring and right on target. But I still struggle with comprehending how old-world educational models will respond to the quandary of implementing the changes he’s describing. That’s where the real conversation is — and the real work, too. I’d argue that, unfortunately, most academic programs (and the institutions that own them) simply aren’t set up to quickly adapt to the fast and changing pace upon which our society is now based. What incentive, for example, is there for a non-digitally-native tenured professor to completely adapt her skills and methodologies to meet today’s demands, especially when she needs to continue to teach yesterday’s curriculum to students currently in the antiquated program?”

Tom Fisher’s remarks were followed by a lively panel discussion and Q&A featuring veteran local designers Bill Moran of Blinc Publishing and Bill Thorburn of The Thorburn Group, as well as educators Paul Bruski of Iowa State University, and Alex DeArmond of University of Wisconsin-Stout. Surprisingly (or perhaps not), the panel brought the conversation from the stratosphere down to ground level with a strong focus on the importance of the tangible elements of graphic design like typography. For me, the interesting tension of the session was drawing connections between Tom Fisher’s big vision and the reality of what is happening in the classroom.

Keith Christiansen of St. Cloud State University followed up by email with this comment: “I had the impression you left one question dangling…how do we as design faculty teach social media? It’s definitely important to factor in. I bring it up in my classes and have sited the Geek Girls (Twin Cities-based bloggers and social media gurus, Nancy Lyons and Meghan Wilker) who view it as a new paradigm for communication. The analogy is like in a party where you meet with people in short exchanges and the rule is you can’t be a bastard, over hype or be obnoxious or the Facebook/Twitter crowd will freeze you out. If a client lies or misrepresents, the news will be spread immediately. In other words one has to be empathetic, somewhat cool, useful, provide value and above all reliable, trustworthy. This is a simplistic view of course but I am attracted to the virtues of it as a new communication model. I share that with students and Integrate it with problems posed to them in terms of their projects-how they come to their solutions matters.”

University of Minnesota professor Steven McCarthy followed up by email with this comment: “We didn’t touch on the role of research in design education.” Here’s a link to a recent Eye magazine blog post by Steven on the topic.

Special thanks to Jennifer Price and John Vorwald of AIGA Minnesota for organizing the Faculty Forum. There was definitely an interest on the part of the educators in attendance to continue the conversation!

I had the pleasure of introducing Casey Caplowe, co-founder and creative director of GOOD at the finale of the series. I met Casey last summer when we were both on the jury for the 2010 Sappi Ideas That Matter competition. You get to know someone pretty well when you’re locked in a hotel conference room together for 2½ days, and I found Casey to be a shrewd and thoughtful critic of design, with a deep and genuine passion for social change. GOOD—as they say on their website—is an integrated media platform making a magazine, website, videos, and live events for people who give a damn. Founded in 2006, the quarterly GOOD magazine, a three-time finalist for the National Magazine Award, is a breakthrough in visual communication. The infographic—those forgettable bar graphs and pie charts so often relegated to the sidebars—is elevated and celebrated on the pages and screens of GOOD. With breathtaking consistency and creativity, GOOD transforms unthinkably serious and complicated social problems like healthcare, taxes, and the environmental crisis into visual stories that delight, engage and inform. What I love about, the GOOD infographics is that they clarify these complex topics without oversimplifying them. They don’t shy away from the deep details in order to make a pretty picture, and the result is that I really learn something about these topics.

Casey made a number of memorable points in his presentation—one of which is the title of this post—but I was particularly surprised by his description of how the creative staff of GOOD are beginning to work with some of the business partners (ie: advertisers) of the magazine and website. The GOOD creative team are operating more like a creative agency than the design department of a publisher. I think this is a brilliant way to meet the challenge of modern day magazine publishing and find a way to supplement the finances by expanding your core offering (in this case, awesome design) to generate supplemental revenue.

All five of the 2011 Insights lectures can be viewed on the Walker Channel.