AGDA DNA 020210

2nd February, 2010

Regular updates on design news and activities of the national council and executive office

Year-end Reviews from the following AGDA State Chapter Presidents

ACT - a new president, a new council, a new direction.

An outgoing president and a turnover of councillors required a change in 2008-09. With the new council to be finalised, AGDA ACT had the opportunity to seek fresh industry representatives to broaden the pool of professional experience represented by those continuing service.

The council expanded in number and diversity of representatives, and despite the loss of Elissa Northrup and her wealth of corporate knowledge and commitment, grew stronger than it had been in some years.

Adding to the new professional councillors, were two new positions; graduate councillor and student councillor.

Equipped with a committed and diverse team, AGDA ACT was able to set about prioritising the value of Association membership, with the hope of addressing the issue of member numbers.

Studies at national level and through the Victorian chapter made it clear that AGDA members wanted more from the organisation, and felt that the provision of genuine professional development and support was the key to restoring value.

AGDA ACT determined early in the 08-09 term to achieve this through the introduction of a regular electronic newsletter, a re-assessment of the event calendar and event structure and a greater focus on building professional community. More

SA have had a full and exciting line up of events

Three international speakers were presented; Kris Sowersby (New Zealand) with his insight into type design, Rick Poynor (UK) with 'Design thinking or critical design?' and Barbara Glauber (New York, USA) and her beautiful work with book design. Kevin Finn also made the lengthy trip from remote town Kununurra, Western Australia to present his inspirational experience of working in a regional area with local, national and international clients. Adelaide-based creatives Robin Eley (Illustrator) and Daniel Noone (Photographer) also provided an insight into their respective fields and experiences on our Nuts & Bolts evening.

An alternative format for social events was presented with the first Open Studio in May at Detour Design and the second in July at the East Terrace Studios of Dan Design, Dilfinch and Dilfinch, Mash, Sage, Sector 7G and Working Images. Both events provided insight into the environment and work of the studios, I would like to thank all involved.
A range of new events were trialled to see if we could find new events to refresh the format and to increase attendance. We have found that attendance has been steady at events but could be improved. Online payment gateways are being set up for every state as we speak. This should enable greater efficiencies in event registration and reporting and will enable us to have greater control with expenditure at events. We have also continued with the incentive of ‘join AGDA on the night and get into the event free' as well as free events to student members. This has been successful with people joining membership at events.

At a national level A new ‘graduate' category has been established for memberships, and each state has been asked to track the conversion rates of student to graduate, and from graduate to professional membership. There were 240 members in South Australia as of 1 September 2009 with a break down of 131 professional, 11 Associate, 12 Graduate, 81 Student and 5 Affiliate members. We hope in the future to have a greater conversion rate from student member to professional member with the implementation of the graduate category. More

TAS - A year ago we saw a leadership change

Fiona Brine had been involved in AGDA Tas as President for 8years. Myself, assisted by Nathanael as vice president took up our new roles which has been an enjoyable challenge and learning curve! I'd like to thank Nathanael, our office bearers, John and Peta and all of council for your hard work, support and dedication to delivery high quality events in 2009.

After a busy 2008, we got off to a slow start this year, with our first event not being held until April. To make up for this - we have been especially lucky to have had two international visiting speakers organised byAGDA National this year. Kris Sowersby and Barbara Glauber both broke the mould of the big-name graphic designers, but still managed to attract healthy sized audiences and expose local designers to inspiring and talented work of international standard. It was especially refreshing to have our first female international speaker. We've continued with our policy to hold these talks at the Art school and inturn offering free admission to students of whom we had good attendance.

Professional development for members has been well balanced, with a new event held in May, Client Fishing, facilitated by Impress: clear communication, which delivered an interesting approach on how to get, and keep the type of clients we want to work with. This will be nicely bookended by the next weeks seminar, The Design of Business, delivered by Melbourne based consultant, Andrew Lam bo Tan In our commitment to delver events that cater to a broad audience, this year has seen our first event tailored to designers working in multimedia and web - New Media 101 - which featured a diverse range of presenters, both in the flesh and via the web. This event attracted a lot of new faces from an area of our industry we have not well catered for in the past. We hope to continue delivering events of this style in the future. More

WA began with the new committee getting straight to business

With the Understanding and Developing Better Websites event in October 2008 with Human Traffic and Clarity Communications addressing site optimisation and website typography. This was very well attended at the TAFE venue and we recognised it as an area we should address further.

The National AGDA Design Awards and Conference in Adelaide proved to be an excellent event, Very well executed by the Adelaide team with a good selection of really interesting local and international speakers.

Lauren Jury Armitage took on the running of our secretariat which was a very smooth transition and has been working very well all year.

The committee held our brainstorming session in November to give us a good start in planning the years events and an enthusiastic new council produced many good ideas.

March brought our second Web event for the year Technology to help get you online! With Glenn Nicholas from OM4 and Paul Bui of Monk Media. This proved just as popular as the first web event with a great deal of interaction and many questions from the floor.

In April we held a Movie Night showing The Boat that Rocked, giving Members the informal event to catch up with each other.

And in May we James Bryans ran a very popular Screen Printing workshop. This is an event we hope to run again.

The AGDA Mentoring program for student members attracted only 4 student members this year and I would like to at least double that in the year to come.

The AGDA design Brief was not as successful as we'd hoped and we will work with the Unis to improve the participation of students.

Nationally Brendan Hibbert and I have attended meetings throughout the year to represent WA on the board.

Some of the years highlights from the National Council have been:

> The 2009 AGDA National Council devoted two rewarding days in August to strategy planning, coming away with excellent outcomes - to be shared soon.

> Operations Manual development almost ready to distribute.

> AGDA Awards, beautiful Awards book now available.

> Alliances developed with Semi Permanent, A new one with Desktop magazine Australian Design Council

> 2 highly successful International Speaker Tours

> Implementation of the AGDA Poster Annual

> AGDA website goes from strength to strength; member profiles and studio profiles are available to all members and online payment gateways are being set up for every state.

> A week of design celebratory events being planned in Brisbane 11-16 October 2010, consisting of the Icograda Design Week Conference, Design Business workshops and culminating in the 10th AGDA National Biennial Awards on the 16th October.

> Two surveys will be uploaded on to the website. A high level of response is important to collate information on Industry benchmarks , salaries etc and Member satisfaction. More

QLD a busy year with many exciting events and initiatives

In Queensland, we continued to hold the popular Back 2 Basics events each month on a Saturday morning. The TALK events with guest speakers also continued to be popular and maintained high attendance numbers. One of the highlights being Claudio Kirac.

The AGDA Queensland Student Council continued to thrive and delivered a number of events to the student community. They have also been working on an extended project in partnership with KW Doggett which will be completed by the end of the year. The Student Council is made up of representatives from QCA, Southbank Institute, Design College Australia and Sunshine Coast University.

There was continued effort and a large investment of time into building further relationships with Queensland Government. This resulted in partnering with Arts Queensland to deliver a high profile event in August featuring two international guest speakers... Don Ryun Chang from Korea and David Berman from Canada. Both guests also serve on the board for Icograda, International Council of Graphic Design Associations. The event was extremely successful and contributed to raising AGDA's profile with government. More

AGDA Website Postings

Check out the latest:

Any Colour As Long As It's Green 

Run for the Kids with Team AGDA in Melbourne

Design For Everyone: Expressions of Interest Open

UTS Design & Architecture Building in Haymarket, Sydney Undergoes Significant Upgrade

Special Member Price $125 - 9th AGDA Awards 2008 Compendium

Till next week,

Cheers,

Rita Siow

AGDA Executive Director