Day 2 of the AIGA Leadership Retreat was once again filled with great insight about the organization and design community, and what we can be doing to help foster it. Our focus today was on initiatives such as Design for Good and The Living Principles. These are two great programs to help empower designers to give back to their communities. If you haven’t already checked them out, I highly recommend doing so.

We were also fortunate enough for the Mayor R.T. Rybak of Minneapolis to take some time out of his busy schedule to come talk to us about the imporance of design to affect change through innovation. He is a great voice in support of the design community, and it was refreshing to hear his perspecitive.

Continuing, we learned more about the current culture of designers, and how AIGA can be a catalyst for design ‘do-goodery.’

Next, we heard from AIGA Austin, who discussed the extrodinary success they’ve had with their Design Ranch, and a bit about how they were able to do it. If you haven’t heard of it, Design Ranch is a really cool workshop-driven retreat where designers get out, get their hands dirty and produce some incredible work. After that, we heard from AIGA Philly about the Paid Internship Pledge. This is a great program to help protect young designers in the industry and ensure that they are getting the most fulfilling internship experience possible.

I then attended a panel session on building a stronger member experience, of which there was great discussion and ideas. We will be taking a look at some of these concepts and seeing how we can apply them to AIGA Idaho.

The theme of the day was how we as designers can use our skills and knowledge to give more back to the community, and how AIGA can help us do it. Along with the links above, there are other great resources out there to help designers connect with each other and with the community in need of their help. I hope you will take a moment to see how you as a designer can do so.