AIGA Professional Series: The Business of Design in 2012

I attended the AIGA Professional Speaker Series event on Wednesday night. The Professional Series is essentially where designers and entrepreneurs alike meet to speak about the design business. This event, in particular, allowed designers from a number of businesses to hold a panel discussion about what 2012 holds in store. 

            The moderator for the event was Eduardo Braniff from Imagination. The panelists included Juan Rosenfeldt from FreeRange, Chris Do from BL:ND, Bryan Neff from Innovation Protocol, and Scott Meisse and Wendy Thai from Ferroconcrete. This was my first live AIGA event and I honestly didn’t know who these designers were, nor did I know what business they were from. However, I recognized the fact that I need to get myself out there, I need to start meeting designers, and I need to start getting to know who they are and what they’re businesses are about if I want to become a successful designer and entrepreneur myself. This event sounded like it would be the perfect way for me to start networking and I jumped at the opportunity. I can honestly say that I learned a great deal about some of their business practices and what they’re looking forward to in 2012.

            One of the topics that came up was branding and Bryan Neff from Innovation Protocol was the first to speak about the subject. He described branding as being behavior moving and spoke about how 2012 is going to be an era based on emotion. Their Strategic Brand Development methodology holds that with branding, an audience should trust and believe in the designer and design group to give them exactly what they need. Wendy Thai from Ferroconcrete jumped into the conversation and explained how 2012 is going to be a time of digital push for designers to really go above and beyond what they know and to push the boundaries of technology today. This year holds great challenges for all of us, but we should never forget where we, as designers, came from: print. She stated that print has a tactility that connects us to each other and that now, through our advanced technologies, were facing a loss of human connection and interaction.

            Branding was the prominent topic of the evening and it was said that the biggest challenge of branding today is how designers utilize their capabilities to match emotion through a variety of platforms. Designers have to keep in mind the best way to represent their client and they have to know what applications are the best fit for the client’s project.

Chris Do from BL:ND spoke about the idea of radical differentiation which is how one stands out and apart from the crowd in a world where it’s difficult to stand out. He posed questions about how a business becomes a place that does it all and how a business positively transforms their client’s experience. He was basically saying that we have to have an honest business relationship with our clients; we need to tell them exactly who we are and what we do. In turn, the client will tell us about their project at hand and they will be honest to us about their budget, how many other design firms are pitching ideas, etc. It will allow us the chance to make well informed decisions on whether or not it’s a good opportunity to pursue or if we should ultimately walk away from the job.

The main message that the panelists wanted to convey is that 2012 is going to be a year of teaching and a return to basic human principles of inspiration and humanity. We need to be genuine and ask questions and delve deep to find out as much information about a client’s needs as we can in order to provide the best solution possible. We need to ask ourselves if we are aligning culturally with our client’s businesses and if we are the right fit for meeting their needs.

One of the attendees posed a question regarding a recent post from the CEO of Twitter and the idea of “Rockstar” designing. Juan Rosenfeldt from FreeRange tackled the question and spoke of how 2011 marks the end of the era of “Rockstar” designing and 2012 marks the beginning of the era of team designing. The creative team is coming together more now than ever, but the reality is that even though teams are working more closely together, we still need superstars like Jack Welch and Steve Jobs to keep us on our toes.

            Designers are service providers. We are in the business of providing a service to our clients. We do not create our own expression with a client; we create an expression of the client for the client. As designers, we are continually learning with every client and with every project.

There were so many topics that were discussed that night that one really had to be in attendance to fully absorb all of the information that was being discussed. Wendy left us with something a client had said to her one day. Her client told her that having the right tools doesn’t make a client a designer, it makes them dangerous. It was a great event and I was able to speak and network with a number of designers who attended. We also received a book courtesy of Innovation Protocol that discusses their Strategic Brand Development methodology in more detail.  

I’m definitely looking forward to attending more AIGA events and I’m excited for the 17^th Annual Y-Design Conference at the end of March.