Studioblog (n): a blog by Studiobanks about design, marketing, internet, business, Charlotte and more.

Jumping in as the new AIGA Communications Director

Banks 0 Comments

Not long after I gave a lecture at our studio to the local Charlotte chapter of AIGA, I was asked by the chapter's president, Chris Bradle, to join the group's board of directors. AIGA is the oldest and largest membership association for professionals engaged in the discipline, practice, and culture of designing. Nationally, the AIGA represents 22,000 designers through 59 national affiliates and 240 student groups.

The role he had in mind for me was Communications Director. I would be responsible for keeping our membership and local media informed about the happenings of the chapter and work with the event coordinators to properly promote upcoming chapter events. I accepted the position late last year. The first thing I wanted to focus on was revamping the chapter's website. Luckily, the board's Internet Director, Taylor Nall, agreed it needed some attention.

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Design Lecture by Muzak Design Team

Banks 0 Comments

You might remember that Studiobanks gave a lecture for AIGA a few months ago. It was a part of their A Lecture by Your Next Door Neighbor series. Well, this month Muzak's in-house design team has been invited to speak. We have been working closely with their team on Muzak's various website projects. It will be interesting for us to hear more about what their offline design process is like. The event is next Thursday. Make it out if you can. You can find details on the AIGA Charlotte site.

About Muzak Design Team:

As the world’s leading provider of business music, Muzak creates experiences that reach more than 100 million people daily. Some of the biggest brands in business, from Aveda to Sur La Table to Boeing, work with Muzak to enhance their brand image in more than 350,000 client locations. Based out of its home office, Muzak’s in-house design group creates everything you can think of—from sales collateral and web sites to environmental design and apparel. The team of three designers and one copywriter create award-winning work to promote sales and the brand.

The New AIGA.org CMS

Robbie 0 Comments

Designer Naz Hamid recently posted some screens of the new AIGA.org content management system (CMS) on his website Weight Shift. It's a page-based publishing system, which differentiates it from our own record-based Toolbox CMS. But, I'm not trying to pitch you on our Toolbox.

The lesson here is not to neglect the visual appearance of a CMS. Developers are usually great at what they do, but they are not designers. AIGA realized they were going to be spending a lot of time maintaining AIGA.org's content using that interface. Wisely, they contracted separate design teams to build the front-end and back-end for their newly redesign site and then handed those designs off to development teams. Hamid's informed choices on the layout not only make the site's content and structure easy to update and understand, but it gives AIGA something nice to look at while they do it.

Design Un-Plugged: A Panel Discussion with Charlotte Studio Owners

Banks 1 Comments

Recently I had the opportunity to represent Studiobanks and speak on a discussion panel of Charlotte based studio owners held by AIGA. All of the selected studios employed between 5 and 10 people. It was an honor to be included in such an esteemed group of local firms. The discussion covered various subjects like running a design studio, working in Charlotte and hiring the right people. Here is a snippet of some of my responses on the various topics:

What do you prefer to spend more time doing, design or business?

While I do enjoy business side of things, I prefer to spend more time on design and the creative direction of our various projects. There was a time about a year ago that the studio had grown to a point where I was doing business about 90% of the time. It was quite draining, so I hired a project manager to help with client relations and the day-to-day business operations of Studiobanks.

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