In the age of social media, why belong to AIGA?

Can an individual designer be successful and fulfilled without AIGA? Yes, of course. So, why join?

Designers are, by nature, independent and tend to not be joiners. Yet there are several reasons that designers often cite for joining AIGA: the interest in being part of a community, the need to share and discover information about design and its practice with others, and to create a voice for the profession that can build understanding and respect for the profession.

Do these reasons still make sense in an era of social media?

If access to the names of others and free information are the only value you seek, then a virtual forum may be all you need. If you are interested in deeper interaction with others, face to face; if you’d like to contribute to the cumulative knowledge and understanding of design; and if you would like to help in developing a voice that can articulate and promote the value of design, then AIGA offers that opportunity to invest in the future of your chosen profession.

Associations create a stronger voice for individual professionals

Professions such as law and medicine have gained stature and position in society and the economy by having individual practitioners choose to associate with each other and share resources to build a stronger future: by documenting its legacy, developing standards of professionalism, building a stronger future for the profession and giving voice to the profession’s aspirations and value. Without a professional association, there are many practitioners, each making his or her own way, perhaps speaking at cross purposes, perhaps each having to educate every potential client in isolation.

AIGA builds the social capital of the design profession by creating a community with strong social ties—online and offline—and by articulating the standards of professional practice developed by that community. The ties AIGA encourages among designers are important for more than mere social reasons. These ties help designers—who often work in relative isolation—develop personal, social and professional relationships with other designers. Once this occurs, there is the opportunity to develop a form of civic virtue for the community: social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them.

Trust and trustworthiness stem from shared connections and expectations

Social connections are important for the rules of conduct that they sustain. When there is a strong sense of shared and mutual obligation, there is a greater likelihood that professionals will treat their colleagues and competitors with the kind of respect that they wish to receive.

AIGA not only serves the purpose of creating a community and developing connections among members, but it encourages members to articulate and observe the standards by which they would like to operate, both individually and collectively. While AIGA provides an authoritative voice on standards, it is actually the strength of the social network of the community that endows those standards with authority. The standards are only effective if each member of the community acts in accordance with them, trusting that all fellow designers will honor the same code of conduct. This trust results in collective trustworthiness, if designers know each other and respect each other. Short-term altruism yields long-term self-interest in a professional community.

The interactions that create this sense of community and nurture its real benefits are not the strong bonds of friendships one might expect, which actually occur only rarely. Loose ties—known as bridging relationships—have an even greater impact on civic virtue, for they extend the norms into new areas beyond your close personal friendships.

The issue for many is whether this role—creating a trustworthy community—is one that should be funded by members and whether it has a value for every professional and should be an investment in the profession each designer has chosen.

Professional codes of ethics are projected by the group to society at large

AIGA is an expression of the profession: it codifies and projects the attributes of design that warrant respect for its practitioners. Perhaps individual designers feel it is an unnecessary pursuit, except that they too want to benefit from a public understanding of what they do, why it is valuable and what the expected standards of professionalism should be.

We sometimes forget how young the design profession is. AIGA, as the oldest society of communication designers in the United States, is less than a century old, and the term “graphic designer” is even younger. For AIGA, this creates a special responsibility to encourage its members to develop a kind of social order that will enhance the growth of the profession and success of all designers, not only themselves.

Many of those who question the value of AIGA want, nonetheless, to benefit from the shared values of the profession and its history; those who join recognize the value choose to invest in these attributes of professionalism for both their own benefit and for the benefit of all who practice design.

A formal network achieves different objectives than an informal one

There are certainly ways that informal networks such as social media sites can be just as vibrant and successful as professional associations, without being at cross purposes. AIGA embraces the flexibility and immediacy of social media as a viable complement to the association model. We do not restrict AIGA Facebook and LinkedIn groups to current members, and we encourage all interested designers to connect on social media sites.

For those who are current members, we sincerely thank you for your continued support and the contribution your support has made toward building a respected profession. And for those of you who are not currently members, we hope that our role has been able to assist you in some way and we look forward to a deeper relationship in the future.