SAVE THE DATE! Monday, November 2 at 6:30.

Get ready to retrain your brain! Our first event will include Dana Farbo, the president of acrossair, the company that developed, among other things, the augmented reality NY Subway app for the iPhone. We’ll cover topics of interface design, location-aware mobile technology and augmented reality. More details to follow.

About Emerging Ideas:
I’m very excited about the potential of this new board initiative. The inspiration for this new role and its initiatives came from a culmination of several factors including member feedback, an ever-changing design industry, the blinding speed of technological (and social) evolution and a challenging economy.

While I was the Membership Director for AIGA Boston from 2007-2009, I was exposed to a lot of revealing information and feedback from our members. A common thread throughout the feedback has always been a desire to be informed and taught through a broader view of design practice, especially relating to interactive media. As I was formulating a way to deliver on those requests, I realized we had to go broader and deeper than focusing only on training people to “make web sites.” You can expect to see events programming, professional development, student outreach and partnerships established that will include some of the following themes:

+ interactive & interface design
+ mobile technology & location-aware socialization
+ user experience design
+ information design
+ human-centered design & design thinking
+ cultural anthropology/ethnography
+ design innovation
+ social media
+ design for social change
+ entrepreneurship & more…

Philosophically, this initiative will promote the marriage of design and technology, not sacrifice one for the other. Strong roots in visual communication principles will remain at the core. What we’ll offer is intended to be an ongoing extension of our current collective professional practice of design. As our industry (and thinking) must evolve rapidly along with new innovations in technology, communication and socialization to survive, we’ll strive to inspire and teach our community of designers to do so in newer, broader categories of design thinking and practice.

We’re currently working on some exciting events and lectures for the upcoming season, as well as great partnerships with Apple, the MIT Media Lab, The Dynamic Media Institute at Mass Art, and more.

I look forward to seeing you soon!

Jodi Vautrin, Director of Emerging Ideas, AIGA Boston
Thoughts? Ideas? emergingideas@boston.aiga.org
Want to volunteer? Mention Emerging Ideas to: volunteers@boston.aiga.org