Austin and Boston: two great chapters that are about to write a new chapter in AIGA history this Earth Day. The inaugural event of AIGA's new Coast2Coast Series will bring the two chapters together -- through the miracle of Skype -- for a virtual roundtable discussion on the role that design is playing in making our world a better, saner, cleaner place.

You'll hear from leading thinkers and doers how design is revolutionizing the way we experience the world around us and join in a discussion about design, technology, passion, and why design is a key element in shaping our planet's future.

Parking
Available in the Hayward Street Lot, one block east of the venue.

Member Exclusive!
We'll be drawing one lucky member to win a free ticket to Inside the Designer's Studio with Paula Scher on May 24.

More!
Visit this site for up-to-the-minute updates on special offers and event details.

Boston Panel

David Small, head of MIT Media Lab's Design Ecology research group, and graduate students Richard The and Jeffery Warren will present their studies on information in space, including embodied data visualization (The) and grassroots mapping (Warren).

David Small
David Small heads the Lab's Design Ecology research group. He is interested in the intersection of design and technology, and his work creates visual communication that incorporates new display and computational technologies, novel software techniques, and perceptual and cognitive issues.

Small received his PhD and MS in media arts and sciences, and his BS in cognitive science, all from MIT. He began his studies of dynamic typography in three-dimensional landscapes as a student of the late Muriel Cooper, founder of MIT's Visible Language Workshop. He was also a member of John Maeda's Aesthetics and Computation Group. Small's thesis, Rethinking the Book, examined how digital media, in particular the use of three-dimensional and dynamic typography, will change the way designers approach large bodies of information. His work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, Documenta11, the Centre Pompidou, and the Copper-Hewitt National Design Museum. He is the principal and founder of Small Design Firm, Inc.

Jeffery Warren
Grassroots Mapping (grassrootsmapping.org) is a series of participatory mapping projects involving communities in cartographic dispute. Participants worked with a series of organizations and communities to produce maps with children and adults from several communities in Lima, including the Cantagallos settlement of Shipibo on the bank of the Rimac and the Juan Pablo II community in Villa El Salvador.

Seeking to invert the traditional power structure of cartography, the grassroots mappers used helium balloons and kites to loft their own “community satellites” made with inexpensive digital cameras. The resulting images, which are owned by the residents, are georeferenced and stitched into maps which are 100x higher resolution that those offered by Google, at extremely low cost. In some cases these maps may be used to support residents’ claims to land title. By creating open-source tools to include everyday people in exploring and defining their own geography, Warren hopes to enable a diverse set of alternative agendas and practices, and to emphasize the fundamentally narrative and subjective aspects of mapping over its use as a medium of control.

In this talk, we will review the January projects in Lima, Peru and discuss the ongoing work of activist and community-based grassroots mappers around the world.

Richard The
Embodied Data Visualization – This project proposes a novel, experimental way to experience statistical data. By virtually putting abstract information in context with people in our immediate environment, a new set of relationships between the data, our personal life and the society we live in is established.

In a proposed installation, the viewer sees the world around him overlaid with a virtual layer of information. In his view each person is virtually annotated with one data point of a statistical data set from another world: A distant place, another time or even a fictionalreality. While still situated in the viewer’s surrounding, the people become embodied representations of this possible reality and the viewer can literally walk through the data set. This thesis will investigate if through the juxtaposition of abstract data and reaL people the relationship between the information and our individual lives becomes more tangible and direct; if it entices us to reflect on our own and other people’s situation and if it makes us consider the implications a possible other reality could have on our lives.

Austin Panel

Creative Director Kelly Blanscet, Art Director Christie Zangrilli, and Chief Strategist Liam Kernell from Tribe, a democratically run advertising agency that thrives on growing forward-thinking creative campaigns for clients invested in the common good, will discuss mission-driven design.

Kelly Blanscet, Creative Director
Kelly, the founding member of Tribe, is an award-winning graphic designer and art director with over 20 years of creative experience. Expanding the concept of sustainability to the workplace structure itself, she initiated Tribe Creative Agency as a cooperative enterprise, empowering workers with equal co-ownership and democratic rule—and by appealing to their passions by servicing clients invested in the Common Good. Her small creative boutique, Graphic Granola, has taken on numerous environmentally-friendly projects over the years, from green building to Green Party campaigns, as well as servicing many Austin area non-profits. She has led creative teams at several agencies in Austin, San Antonio, and Dallas/Fort Worth—including Senior Art Director at Parker & Wood (San Antonio) and NourzAds (Austin), Senior Designer at Williamson-Dickie (Fort Worth), and Designer at direct marketing giants Harte-Hanks and Advo (Dallas). She has a BFA in Advertising Art from the University of North Texas. 

Liam Kernell, Chief Strategist
Liam brings over 20 years of marketing and strategic expertise to Tribe, with many of those years spent focused on furthering Common Good causes. He was formerly Director of Creative Services for EnviroMedia Social Marketing, where he directed and managed award-winning campaigns for Don’t Mess with Texas (the state's official anti-litter campaign), Texas Department of State Health Services and Lower Colorado River Authority. He also has marketing and advertising experience in the technology sector, managing print, online and content teams at companies such as Dell, 3M and Freescale. Prior to joining Tribe, he gained social media experience as senior project manager and executive producer for Powered, Inc. He served two terms as president of the Austin Advertising Federation, and was a recipient of the organization’s Silver Service Award in 2004, awarded to advertising professionals who "have made outstanding contributions to advertising and who have been active in furthering the industry's standards, creative excellence and responsibility in areas of social concern." Liam has a BA in Social Sciences from the University of California, Berkeley.  

Christie Zangrilli, Art Director
Prior to joining Tribe, Christie ran her own graphic and web design studio in both New York and Austin, working for clients ranging from small businesses to large corporations. In addition to traditional 2D design, Christie is well versed in 3D arts of environmental design, creating everything from interior graphics to innovative wallcovering products and installations. She also works with non-profit organizations that are focused on sustainability, such as Austin Green Art, Project H and Sol Design Lab. Other recent ventures include creating an outdoor signage piece for a new Green Tech High School, designing therapeutic-room wall applications for a foster-child community and leading communications for an innovative Solar Charging Station project. Christie has a BFA in Graphic Communications from New York University, and an MFA in Design from the University of Texas.