Dressed In Value is a graphic design studio in Louisville, Kentucky.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

A little more than a couple weeks ago I pub­lished a bit of crit­i­cism against the Louisville Graphic Design Asso­ci­a­tion (LGDA). I hadn’t intended it merely for the sake of crit­i­cism, but more for open­ing up some ques­tions, stir­ring con­ver­sa­tion and critical-​thinking about the work that design­ers are doing here in Louisville.

How­ever it may have sounded, I was hon­estly look­ing and hoping for some­thing more in our city than what their web­site offers at present (yet still look­ing to them to fill the void). It’s too easy to get caught up in the latest style trends and slap it on every­thing we do; or else become so com­pla­cent that we don’t care to really think through the work we’re producing. 

Today I received a lengthy reply from the pres­i­dent of the LGDA, Bran­don Bass. With his per­mis­sion, here it is in its entirety:

Hey Ricky,

Despite being a few weeks since your blog about LGDA was ini­tially posted, I felt it was impor­tant to respond to your crit­i­cisms after a friend (and LGDA member) for­warded me the link this week. Feel free to post this as a response to your orig­i­nal blog entry, or simply read and digest it for yourself.

First of all, I want to thank you for at least being inter­ested enough in the Louisville design com­mu­nity to actively search out the var­i­ous avenues we have avail­able locally. There are only a few orga­ni­za­tions in town that give us chance to engage in design dis­cus­sions and enjoy fel­low­ship with like-​minded people in the cre­ative field. The Louisville Visual Art Asso­ci­a­tion, for instance, is a won­der­ful group whose annual Din­ner­Works and Art Auc­tion events are a per­fect way to net­work and inter­act with some of the city’s fine artists. The Adver­tis­ing Fed­er­a­tion is another local club that hosts plenty of events, but their dues aren’t afford­able to all mem­bers of our com­mu­nity, and adver­tis­ing only accounts for a small por­tion of the work being done by graphic design­ers today. LGDA is an alter­na­tive that wel­comes stu­dents and pro­fes­sion­als alike, offer­ing monthly events that never cease to inspire and an annual awards show that is presently in its 19th con­sec­u­tive year.

The Louisville Graphic Design Asso­ci­a­tion was estab­lished in the mid-80’s to give Louisvil­lians a venue for shar­ing, grow­ing, learn­ing, and embrac­ing graphic design as a unique bridge between artis­tic expres­sion and effec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Since then, we’ve been lucky enough to bring some big names to the city, includ­ing vision­ary designer Stefan Sag­meis­ter, imag­i­na­tive fine artist Gary Base­man, and illustrator/designer/podcaster Mike Perry. Though, I regret to say, our website’s event list focuses on upcom­ing events rather than past ones, this year alone, we’ve hosted a wide vari­ety of speak­ers, lec­tures, films, and social events. April’s com­pelling lec­ture by Mirko Ilic revealed the politically-​charged work of design­ers whose voices were sup­pressed by their native coun­tries. We col­lab­o­rated with Ultra Pop to pro­vide auto­graphed copies of Mr. Ilic’s recent book Design of Dis­sent (co-​authored by Milton Glaser), and hosted the event at the Ken­tucky Museum of Art and Craft, which allowed atten­dees a free stroll through the first and second floors of KMAC. Another pow­er­ful speaker this year was Jerry Kuyper, who exam­ined the nuanced art of logo design in aston­ish­ing detail. The laun­dry list of iden­tity sys­tems in his port­fo­lio includes AT&T, Sprint, Cisco Sys­tems, Exxon­Mo­bil, Gen­eral Elec­tric, the 1996 Olympic Games, World Wildlife Fund, and Touch­stone Pic­tures, all of which have become house­hold names and instantly rec­og­niz­able icons since their cre­ation. Get­ting some insight into the his­tory of their devel­op­ment was enlight­en­ing for both bud­ding design­ers and expe­ri­enced artists.

Apart from our speaker events, we’ve also held “Lunch ‘n’ Learn” events, which give mem­bers a cheap lunch, friendly atmos­phere, and most impor­tanly, a free lesson for Apple or Adobe soft­ware. Recently, we’ve estab­lished a great rela­tion­ship with 21C Museum, where we col­lab­o­rated with the Louisville Film Soci­ety to host a free public show­ing of Hel­vetica, the stir­ring Gary Hus­twit doc­u­men­tary that explores a simple Swiss font and the ways in which typog­ra­phy has helped to shape the world around us. 

Only nine days prior to your Octo­ber 25th blog post, LGDA hosted our annual 100 Show Pre­view Night, which show­cased all of the work sub­mit­ted for our year-​end com­pe­ti­tion includ­ing entries in graphic, inter­ac­tive, and motion design, as well as pho­tog­ra­phy and illus­tra­tion. Our panel of tal­ented judges, which included Arem Dup­lessis, Art Direc­tor of the New York Times Mag­a­zine, Chris Eichenseer, owner of someod­dpi­lot design in Chicago, and Oscar Fer­nan­dez, pro­fes­sor of design at UC’s DAAP school, showed a broad range of back­grounds. All three judges deliv­ered pow­er­ful speeches and showed amaz­ing work to a packed house at the Cress­man Center for Visual Arts down­town. They were impressed by the level of work entered in our regional show and selected some top-​notch pieces to be exhib­ited at 21C for our award cer­e­mony in December.

To address the short­com­ings you alluded to concerning lgda.org, we’ve teamed up with Visual Sci­en­tists, one of Louisville’s many award-​winning web design firms, to do a com­plete site redesign which will be unveiled in Decem­ber. They’ve brought a lot of fan­tas­tic ideas to the table and the new lgda.org will assuredly be more like what you described as the epi­cen­ter of our online design com­mu­nity. I met Visual Sci­en­tist prin­ci­pals Jesse and Jon this year through LGDA, and they’ve quickly become great friends to myself and many other mem­bers. Not only is LGDA a cat­a­lyst for career net­work­ing, it’s also the per­fect place to just meet and talk to other cre­ative professionals.

I’ve been for­tu­nate enough to see the ben­e­fits of the Louisville Graphic Design Asso­ci­a­tion first­hand, but I feel it’s nec­es­sary to set the record straight with the words posted on dressedinvalue.com so that others might have the same oppor­tu­nity. Unlike groups like the AdFed, LGDA’s man­power is 100% volunteer-​based; we’re a non-​profit orga­ni­za­tion that has no paid posi­tions. Every event is coor­di­nated and exe­cuted by people whose pas­sion for design is their only reward. We’re funded by our mem­ber­ship and the gen­er­ous spon­sors that help to keep us alive, and any money we col­lect goes directly back into the budget for our monthly events. As with any vol­un­teer orga­ni­za­tion, there is cer­tainly room for improve­ment — and we would love your help. I encour­age you to attend an event for your­self rather than taking the advice of a col­league — I think you’ll find that we’re any­thing but cliquey. If you have ideas you’d like to offer or sug­ges­tions for enhance­ments, you’re more than wel­come to attend a board meet­ing and join us in our efforts to make Louisville a better place for designers.

Thanks, and I hope to meet you in person soon.

Best,

Bran­don Bass
LGDA Pres­i­dent 2008

So there we have it. LGDA is not the sleep­ing giant I thought it was. Admittedly, I should have actu­ally attended an LGDA event or emailed the orga­ni­za­tion with ques­tions prior to writ­ing what I did. That aside, I’m glad I wrote what I did, because LGDA is get­ting a new web­site! I’m really excited about this. Hope­fully this will be some new ground­work for the future of think­ing and con­ver­sa­tion about design in Louisville.

If you have any ques­tions about LGDA or what Bran­don wrote here, you can email him at theb­bass [atsign] gmail [dot] com.