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A Tour of AIGA's National Design Center

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During a recent trip to New York City, I was treated to a tour of our national offices at the AIGA National Design Center, where George Fernandez was kind enough to show us around. Located right on 5th Avenue in the heart of the Flatiron district, the Design Center serves not only as our national headquarters, but also as a gallery and meeting space.

Encompassing the entire first floor and open to the public, the Design Center's gallery brings design excellence into the public eye. This past Friday, "Everybody Dance Now: 20 Years of Dancing in Print," a retrospective of Abbott Miller's work for Dance Ink and 2wice, opened to the public. Set-up for this exhibit was underway during our visit:

The mezzanine serves as the first floor of offices. With the 365 Call for Entries having just closed, the space was a mess of boxes:

Labeled with each entry category, boxes were packed with design goodies from across the country, while new entries waited to be opened and cataloged into the competition's tracking system.

It was great to get a sneak peek at the entries: judging for each category is soon to begin.

On the landing between the mezzanine and second floors, is a collection of posters from the first Get Out the Vote (http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/get-out-the-vote) initiative in 2000. Prominent in this display is Michael Bierut's Design Counts poster, which was originally used as a save the date postcard for the AIGA Design Conference held in 2002 in Washington, D.C.

The AIGA Library is housed on the second floor. Available by appointment to all AIGA members, the collection houses more than 2,000 titles covering everything from Design history and theory to issues of popular industry periodicals. Also available is an archive of promotional materials from chapters across the country:



Mainly offices, the third floor features several awesome skylights discovered during the building's renovations headed by Pentagram's James Biber. A conference room is available courtesy of the Washington D.C. chapter for members to book for meetings, etc.

Past presidents lining the wall not only give a sense of AIGA's long and distinguished history, but also chronicle its evolution from its printing industry roots in 1914 to today's standing as one of the design industry's largest professional organizations encompassing such varied disciplines as interactive and experience designers to the more traditional fields of print and industrial designers and everything in-between.

Pins mark the location of each of AIGA's 64 chapters

The National Design Center is also home to the AdamsMorioka Archives Vault and serves as headquarters to the New York City chapter. Visitors to New York are welcome to drop by the gallery during business hours, while AIGA members may also schedule a time to peruse the library or archives.

> Lorraine Reinsch (Photos appear courtesy of Ashley Reinsch)

Posted by Kansas in Interview Series  |  April 17, 2009