Growing GROW, the AIGA Austin Conference for Emerging Designers
Learning means you’re growing
If you’re already enrolled in the school of lifelong learning, you’re ahead of the game. To those of you who aren’t (or hadn’t thought about signing up), this math is for you:
Consider that most of us will work 20 (if we’re lucky) to 30 years (more likely) before we retire. In that timespan, the design landscape will look completely different. Picture this: 2019 minus 20 years puts us back in the year 1999. In 1999, I don’t think anyone could have said with certainty that 2019 would look like this. Indeed, in design, we know the future is as uncertain as the algorithms that now shape our experiences.
However, there is something we do know with certainty. We know how and what we design will change over and over during the span of a career. We know that our skill sets (and our mindsets!) cannot stay static if we want our work (and our discipline!) to thrive. As technology changes, as culture moves and as sensibilities about brands, companies, products, services, and the profession of design shifts, we’re constantly asked to imagine the possibilities on the frontier.
It’s an exciting and dynamic time to be a professional creative, but the challenges associated can be daunting. If you’re not prepared to be a lifelong learner, it can feel like the ground is moving out from under you. More and more, design programs are adopting approaches acknowledging that students can’t be taught everything they need to know while in school. If designers emerge from the classroom self-sourcing and confident in their adaptability, they’ve just leapt from the proverbial nest on a pair of wings that will take them to incredible heights and continue to serve them throughout their career.
Is there an emerging designer in the room? (Raise your hands!)
As a part of a national organization dedicated to advancing the discipline of design, the Austin chapter of AIGA has joined in the growing effort across the country to take action towards finding authentic ways to support designers new to the profession. We are interested in the lives of those fresh out of school and those with up to 5 years of professional experience — these are pivotal years for emerging designers. We want to reshape the scope of professional development to support emerging designers at these stages and from different angles during their journey. We view our ability to equip and inspire those new to the Austin design community as an investment in our collective future.
Last year, we put our ears to the ground by sending out our Director of Education on a listening tour of sorts. What we learned confirmed our suspicion that our tradition of hosting portfolio reviews, while helpful, was not robust enough to meet the needs of today’s emerging designers. We wanted to seize the opportunity to connect our local initiatives with national conversations around critical issues of concern and interest to emerging designers that will shape the future for the entire profession — issues that include mental health, peer-to-peer dialog, standards of ethics, personal fulfillment, diversity and inclusion, and much more. Turning our attention away from our traditional focus on skill development and career management, we launched our first day-long conference for emerging designers, called GROW.
Growing GROW
With the need timely and clear, we sprouted GROW by addressing these opportunities to enhance the emerging designer’s experience in Austin. We wanted GROW to pursue programming as dynamic and nuanced as our attendees. With portfolio reviews and networking events well covered by the local community and university programs, we found three opportunities to explore:
1. Dedicate a space to nurturing emerging designers as people, not just skilled labor
Between hard skills and soft skills, there’s a foundational activity that can get lost in the excitement and chaos of a burgeoning career: self-reflection. We saw the opportunity to create a space dedicated to the long-term growth and evolution of an emerging designer, one that encourages critical evaluation and champions the idea that self-awareness enriches not only the individual, but the profession as a whole.
2. Create a platform for emerging designers to contribute to the discipline
Most emerging designers attend conferences to learn and grow from industry professionals. With no official platform to learn from each other, we saw an opportunity at GROW for emerging designers to practice their agency, voice, and critical thinking while developing storytelling and presentation skills along the way.
3. Guide emerging designers through the transition from theory to practice
By designing an event based on peer support and celebration, mentorship, and community, we wanted to bridge that daunting leap from school to work with the connective tissue that supports any healthy career: relationships. Moving beyond happy hour business card swaps, and in the spirit of creating a deeper sense of community, we wanted to focus on connecting emerging designers to the interpersonal resources that will continue to guide, console, support, and encourage them, not just through their initial transition, but throughout their career.
With these values as our guide, the committee established the goal of creating a diverse, affordable, and supportive event to bring these concepts to life. Our inaugural event featured practical and inspirational programming over the course of a single day during the beautiful Texas spring.
Lightning Talks: We had an open call to find ten speakers—all students and designers within the first 5 years of their career—to give ten minute presentations on topics of passion related to their design pursuits. The topics varied widely, from designing for social impact, to issues of representation in design, to the design of experimental typefaces that challenge language and gender. Once selected, speakers were matched with an industry mentor to coach them through crafting a compelling and concise story. At GROW, they took the stage to showcase their ideas and own their voice as emerging thought leaders.
Keynote Speaker: Our keynote speaker, Indhira Rojas, founder of Anxy Magazine and creative director at Anagraph, shared her personal journey through the creation of Anxy Magazine, a publication focusing on the intersection of design and mental health. She gave a moving presentation about Anxy’s origin story, a behind-the-scenes look at the creative process, and offered lessons learned from growing her business from the ground up.
Workshops: Tailored interactive tracks provided conference attendees with focused career-building activities specific to their experience level. Each track contained a panel, a workshop, and a community-building exercise designed to encourage attendees to look at their career with intention and seek meaningful connections in a more intimate setting.
GROW 2.0
We were overwhelmed by the turnout and positive response from the first year of GROW. The feedback and support we received encouraged us to continue to lay a new foundation to build a stronger design community. Currently, we’re working on the next iteration of the GROW conference, slated for Spring 2020, and are thinking a lot about how we want the conference to develop from year to year.
Last year, the team was small. With only 7 people, we were lean but mighty, allowing us to imagine, plan, and test out GROW 1.0 with only a 3-month runway. But as the conference continues to grow, it is important to us that we design this conference in a way that will serve all emerging designers. What we’ve learned from our practice as designers (and humans) is that the best way for us to serve the community is to invite more folks to have a seat at the table with us. By expanding the GROW team, we are looking to embody GROW’s commitment to diversity of perspectives, experiences, and skills. Additionally, we could use the help—planning a conference is a lot of work, and more hands and minds will help us to continue to make GROW better and better!
We’re looking for self-motivated and highly organized people who are aware of and engaged with the contemporary design conversation. If you’re interested in building GROW with us and helping support emerging designers in Austin, please apply here.
This article was a team effort (of course) by Brandy Shigemoto, Julio Correa, Kenzie Haynes, Brit Clapper and Jimmy Luu.
