Greetings fellow AIGA Members and members of the design community. As I take over as president of AIGA Idaho, I can’t help but be excited for what’s in store. I am fortunate to have the chance to work with a stellar board filled with some truely motivated folks. We are all here for the same reason: to improve and give back to the community, and work to make Idaho a better place for design.

When I was studying design at Boise State, I also had the good fortune to participate on the board of AIGA BSU, serving as president my senior year. From that experience I took away many valuable lessons, primarily the importance of surrounding yourself with passionate individuals, and I get the same feeling when I look at the board we have today. My experience with AIGA BSU, and continuing onto the board of AIGA Idaho also allowed me to watch and learn a great deal from our two previous presidents, Paul Carew and Jane Naillon, and all of the other past board members as they worked tirelessly to get this organization off the ground. Now my goal is to continue and build upon their excellent work.

Our primary objectives as an organization are to foster the local design community, support the design industry and use our skills to give back to the community at large. This follows the mission of AIGA nationally, and the 2014 Mandate, leading up to the 100th anniversary of AIGA. Below are our goals as an organization for the coming year.

1. Support the design community by providing more small social and educational events.

I believe that we can provide a better value for our members by scaling back the large, out-of-town speaking events in favor of more small social gatherings, workshops and hosting more local and regional speakers. We will still push to get some of the bigger names in design to come to Boise, but our focus will be smaller events with greater frequency.

In order to better solidify our event calendar, and to make events more convenient for our members, we will also start having our ‘series’ events (Drinks for Design and Learnch) on a recurring schedule. Keep an eye out for more info in the coming weeks. If you have any suggestions or ideas please don’t hesitate to let us know.

We will also continue our support of design in education, and the AIGA student groups by continuing to work with them on programs such as Mixed Mentor, and looking for new ways we can create a better AIGA experience for students.

2. Support the design industry by better demonstrating our value as designers.

Design is a valuable tool for creative problem solving. AIGA should work to support the role of designers as creative problem-solvers in the business community, and help show the value of a healthy design relationship.

I believe the first step must be reaching out to the business community. We will work to find ways to partner with more organizations tied to the business community, to help open up dialogue and the opportunity to share ideas.

3. Giving back to the community by using our skills as designers.

AIGA nationally has and partners with some wonderful tools to help designers give back in an effective way. If you haven’t already, I would highly encourage you to check out Design for Good and The Living Principles. On the local level, AIGA Idaho will be a resource for empowering our membership to give back to the community, and work on ways that we as an organization can do the same. Again, I welcome the ideas of our membership in terms of how you would like us to approach this goal. We have some ideas for events and initiatives around giving back to the non-profit community, and more information on those will be available in the coming months.

So with that, we are all extremely excited to roll up our sleeves and get to work, and we welcome any ideas or feedback from our membership. At the root level, we are here to serve you, and provide value for your membership, so please speak up, volunteer to help or simply come to events and meet with your peers. This organization lives and breathes with you, so I encourage you to stand up, come together and help us continue the mission of AIGA Idaho.

Steve Norell
President