AIGA UPSTNY - President
Jeff Barlow
AIGA Seattle - President
Lost and Found: The World
1
As a young designer, I have many ideas but sometimes I lack the strength or sound advice to get past the WOW of the idea and into the nitty-gritty of accomplishing the idea. One such idea is to make a living traveling the world and designing. If engineers and doctors can do it, why can’t designers? And so I began my quest with big hopes. Though I have stumbled along the way (and boy have I tripped over myself more than once), I wouldn’t be the successful and enterprising designer I am today without the support of my fellow AIGA mentors.
2
Oddly enough, I found AIGA when I was teaching English in rural China. The email address of the (at the time) San Francisco board member was posted on a very strange Chinese/Thai website. So I sent him a flippant response, assuming he was my age and a vagabond student of design, having absolutely no idea what this AIGA thing was all about. He politely responded and referred me to the national website. I still didn’t quite get it. Sure, I’ll join but why dedicate myself to some faceless entity? After a few years I was on the market looking for a job. Thanks to ample AIGA resources and members, I was saved from some pretty horrific situations (re: taken advantage of) young designers seem to find themselves in these days. I still had an itch to work abroad and saved up all my courage and support from my AIGA mentors and ran away to Asia, again. This time I had the starry-eyed ideals of a young person trying to make it big. When reality hit, I realized getting a job in a foreign country is much easier said than done. As luck would have it, I did pick up an international client and had one of the most exciting projects of my freelance career. Unfortunately, Chinese business men are of a different breed than American standards and again, I found myself running back to AIGA begging for advice. Now a bit more savvy in the ways of the world, I wanted to give back to the organization that had already given me so much. I began volunteering on a regular basis to AIGA XCD and saved up my money and energy to try again at my dream of working as an international designer. So, here I am in Malaysia. I didn’t find the job of my dreams but I found something much greater, the self-confidence to start my business and do it right. And I know, every step of the way, AIGA will be behind me. Watching me as I continue to grow into a seasoned professional. Because of AIGA I have the courage to attempt what I and my family considers, the impossible.