AIGA NY Mission Statement, 2014

AIGA NY’s mission is to demonstrate design’s impact and cultivate the future of design in NYC.

We do this through:

–connecting professional designers and students with ideas, information and each other;

–advocating for design within the city’s civic and cultural life;

–leading collaborative projects with local communities; and

–championing excellent work and innovative practices.

AIGA NY mission statement, 2012–2014

THE MISSION OF AIGA/NY

IS TO IDENTIFY AND DEFINE ISSUES

YOU/US

CRITICAL TO ITS MEMBERSHIP

BUSINESS/COMMUNITY

AND THE DESIGN PROFESSION

RANTS/RAVES

TO EXPLORE AND CLARIFY THESE ISSUES

PROFITABLE/SUSTAINABLE

FOR THE PURPOSE OF HELPING TO ELEVATE

THE STANDARDS OF THE BUSINESS

ART/COMMERCE

OF DESIGN

DOGMATIC/PRAGMATIC

AND TO CREATE A FORUM FOR THE EXCHANGE OF

INFORMATION, VIEWS, IDEAS AND TECHNIQUES

US/YOU

AMONG THOSE ENGAGED IN THE PROFESSION

DESIGN/RELIEF MANIFESTO, 2013

DESIGN/RELIEF is a participatory design initiative to help three New York City neighborhoods—Red Hook, Rockaway, and Lower Manhattan—imagine a more vibrant future for themselves as they overcome the lingering effects of Superstorm Sandy. DESIGN/RELIEF aims to demonstrate design's role in creative placemaking, to help these neighborhoods be more livable, visible, navigable and vibrant.

With DESIGN/RELIEF our goal is:

1 to engage the communities.

2 to inspire and accelerate positive change.

3 to act as a catalyst for imagination of better places.

We believe DESIGN/RELIEF can help because:

1 design is a process that can be used to tackle local challenges in need of local solutions.

2 design is a communication-driven, federating force.

3 designers are skilled at piloting projects, taking risks, challenging the ways in which things are done.

To serve a diverse audience of:

1 three designated waterfront communities of Red Hook, the Rockaways and South Street Seaport (including residents, neighbors, workers, small business owners and visitors) invested in rejuvenating their neighborhoods.

2 the general public.

3 and the New York design community.

Our DESIGN/RELIEF service is:

1 to offer our willingness to investigate existing and future assets and help a neighborhood reinvent itself through design.

2 to use the most appropriate design (whatever the medium) to tackle a particular need of a designated neighborhood devastated by Superstorm Sandy.

3 to demonstrate the value of design by doing.

DESIGN/RELIEF can benefit:

1 people who are seeking a sense of place, confidence after trauma, pride, happiness, security. DESIGN/RELIEF can offer a way forward, vitality, higher media exposure and increased potential for future funding and partnerships.

2 designers who want to be inspired and work on local, meaningful issues, who want to be more impactful, more connected to their cities and find the appropriate framework to expand the definition of their practices.

Unlike other endeavors, such as:

1 architecture, urban planning, policy making initiatives who tend to work within the parameters and realities of a given system.

2 singular endeavors (e.g. artists, architects), or market-driven forces (such as real estate developers).

3 top-down, longer-term, government-led decisions that are typically not taking into account the diversity of interests in a community.

DESIGN/RELIEF provides unparalleled value:

1 in providing fun, timely, "lighter, quicker, cheaper", tangible deliverables, that are easily deployable.

2 in leveraging designers' ability to connect the dots, build relationships, make things visible.

3 in creating authentic markers, physical or time-based, temporary or permanent, that will declare a change in the perception people experience of each of these three neighborhoods.

AIGA NY Special Initiatives statement, 2014

AIGA NY continue to explore the potential of design in defining and expanding creative placemaking to positively transform communities, and expand on the current Design/Relief initiative, which will conclude in a couple months. “As AIGA enters its centennial year, the New York chapter is thrilled to celebrate design's influence in society through community efforts such as DUMBO Circuit, and establish AIGA NY as a go-to platform for graphic designers interested in working in the public realm.

–To demonstrate, through a series of projects, that graphic design is a crucial tool for urban engagement and to "buy graphic design a seat at the larger political table."

–To assert that AIGA NY is a leader in creating and modeling new programming types that can acts as templates for other chapters, or be rolled-out on a larger national scale.

–To demonstrate a more active way that graphic design organizations can approach programming (rather than portfolio talks).

–To become financially self-sustaining/viable, and eventually profitable by establishing a protocol for getting grants, leveraging partnerships with schools and vendors, by establishing new models of sponsorship, and by become a content producer and copyright holder of key programming types.

–To become pedagogically self-sustaining (institutional memory) through a more codified process of bringing new board members into the grant-funded projects each year, so they can lead the second year.

–To develop a system of self-funding board members who are ongoing contributors to long-term initiatives such as DESIGN/RELIEF.

About AIGA/NY

Founded in 1914, AIGA, the professional association for design, is a nonprofit professional membership organization headquartered in New York City. Its formation began in 1911, when Fred Goudy sat at a table with Alfred Stieglitz, W. A. Dwiggins and others who shared a commitment and a passion in the nobility of a profession that had not yet been named: “the purposeful arrangement of text and images to communicate more effectively, with dignity, elegance and impact; and accomplished with high expectations for the craft of production.”

Three years after their first meeting, they decided to create the American Institute of Graphic Arts. They required each member to bring a chair, as the early organization had no permanent home. “We should each ask what we are willing to bring to the table to advance this remarkable profession.”

AIGA NY is the New York Chapter of AIGA. Established in 1982, as the association began to decentralize leadership, AIGA/NY is the largest of 68 chapters with 3,500 members to date. The New York Chapter is a separately incorporated, nonprofit organization with its own Board of Directors, bylaws and tax-exempt status. While it is self-governing in every way, it operates in a manner consistent with the mission of the parent organization.