About
About AIGA Blue Ridge
AIGA Blue Ridge brings together design professionals, students and the people who collaborate with them. Serving Western Maryland, Southwestern Pennsylvania, Northern Virginia and Northeastern West Virginia since 2002, we promote the value of design through networking, continuing education and training and giving back to the communities we live and work in.
About AIGA | the professional association of design
Founded in 1914, AIGA remains the oldest and largest professional membership organization for design. AIGA is the premier place for design—to discover it, discuss it, understand it, appreciate it, be inspired by it. It is the place designers turn to first exchange ideas and information, participate in critical analysis, and research and advance education and ethical practices. AIGA sets the national agenda for the role of design in its economic, social, political, cultural and creative contexts.
AIGA now represents more than 20,000 design professionals, educators and students through national activities and local programs developed by over 60 chapters and 200 student groups.
AIGA serves designers with five critical functions:
- Information
- Communication
- Inspiration
- Validation
- Representation
AIGA is authoritative in promoting and communicating standards for ethical conduct and professional expertise and in collecting and analyzing information about the profession. It is stimulating in its provocative programming on critical issues facing design and in celebration of both effective and innovative design, a source of inspiration for many members. And it is open to new ideas, new professional disciplines and the ever-evolving nature of design.
AIGA supports the interests of professionals, educators and students who are engaged in the process of designing, regardless of where they are in the arc of their careers. The disciplines represented in the profession range from book and type design through the traditional communication design disciplines to the newer disciplines of interaction design, experience design and motion graphics. In addition, AIGA supports the interests of those involved in designing from other disciplines, professions and business who share designers’ commitment to advancing understanding of the value of design.
Through the relationships members develop within the community of designers, the information they share and the standards they develop for the profession, AIGA helps the profession to validate its own ethos and role in business and society. AIGA actively communicates the value of design to the business community and the public.
AIGA serves as a hub of thought-leadership and activity for the designing community. The association is committed to stimulating thinking about design through conferences, competitions, exhibitions, publications and websites. AIGA inspires, educates and informs designers, helping them to realize their talents and to advocate the value of design among the media, the business community, public agencies and the general public. While AIGA was created to advance the design profession, its members now place a higher priority on AIGA’s work in communicating the value of design to audiences outside the profession.