south beach retreat

I just got back from South Beach in Miami where i attended the AIGA National Leadership Retreat. It was amazing! Miami is a diverse cultural melting pot and a hotbed of contemporary art and historic architecture–a perfect place for the AIGA national leadership to address issues such as cultural diversity, community outreach and the value of design.

The retreat consisted of members from each of AIGA National’s 57 chapters across the country to discuss some of the national organization’s initiatives as well as to improve the methods used by each local chapter to manage events and membership. It’s also great to get together with other designers in the field to discuss different solutions to the many challenges we face. As the incoming Communications Chair of the San Diego Chapter, I have definitely come away from the weekend with some new ideas about where we are as an organization and what we might want to focus on to get us to the next level.

Some of the issues that were discussed at the retreat were: sustainability, voting ballot design/legibility standards, the value of design and the design profession, development of a viable design field in China, youth outreach programs, diversity within the design field and within emerging market demographics.

AIGA is the professional association for design. It’s mission is to advance designing as a professional craft, strategic tool and vital cultural force.

nc

check out our new diggs

Well, we’ve managed to, yet again, re-design our site. I suppose that this is inevitable because we are constantly learning new techniques, finding new ways to improve things and make them more functional. Anyhow… You’ll find a lot more information about our studio, projects and the services we offer. Does this sound like an obvious upgrade? Well, you’d be surprised to find that most design studio websites out there lack one major component–content that describes what it is they actually do!

The home page is called “current” because it contains the blog (powered by WordPress) and a slideshow that syncs to our Flickr photostream. We want to use the “current” page to communicate what’s going on with us in our personal/professional lives. The old version of the site had these features on the main page but was a lot more difficult to make updates.

Our new istitch “Con-stitch-uancy” newsletter will provide quarterly updates to our mailing list about all the latest and greatest things going on in the world of branding. We’ll also use it to help promote new resources and tools that businesses can use to communicate better.

The new site’s (X)HTML/CSS/PHP structure is modular, efficient and fully search engine optimized. The site is also laden with alternate content, allowing access from older browsers and mobile devices. Not that we necessarily need our site to be viewed on the mobile web, but it’s good for us to get in that mode so that we can offer it to clients who do need to be accessible on the small screen.

Well… please have a look and don’t be afraid to click on the “contact” tab to let us know what you think.

Thanks for stopping by,

istitch