AIGA Emerging Designers Workshop
On March 10th, we had the great privilege of hosting a workshop here at BAKER in partnership with AIGA Minnesota and their Emerging Designers committee. Each quarter the Emerging Designers (designers typically in their first 4 years out of school) host an event aimed at getting entry-level designers together to learn about, or expand upon, a topic they may not have had much access to within the confines of their formal education. It’s a chance for young creative minds to connect, to learn, and to get inspired, and it was an honor for us to be invited to host such an event.
The idea behind the “So…” series is that “So…” is the beginning of a question, an idea, a community, or a statement. In our session, “So… Outside the Box” (Breaking Down the Packaging Process) we siezed the opportunity to inform our 47 attendees on some of the essentials of what exactly we do here at BAKER on a daily basis. It was a chance for us to demonstrate our process, and for them to get a glimpse behind the curtain of what a typical agency-client relationship might look like.
As we put images with words, we walked the attendees through the BAKER process briefly explaining what each step entails… BrandOP™ is about exploring opportunities, BrandVIS™ about visualizing those opportunities, and BrandEX™ about executing the comprehensive vision of a brand. Finally, because this was a workshop, we put these formative creative minds to work, letting them in on an actual project that had come through our shop about a year ago. We showed off the work that had gone into our BrandOP™ phases (sorry you had to be there to see it) then split them into groups, and sent them on their way to create and apply based on their learnings.
Each group handled the experiment in their own unique way under the guidance of one of our branding professionals and the results were amazing. Even under the pressure of such limited time constraints, each group was able to come up with their own unique solution based on the platform they had been assigned. At the end of the 2 hour workshop, the ideas of each group were displayed for all to peruse as we answered questions, networked and of course had time to socialize.
Thank you again to all who helped make this event happen as well as those of you who were able to attend. It was a great experience for us, as we hope it was for you.
Photos by Jay Larson
