Want to make a dif­fer­ence in a young person’s life? Become a men­tor at Giving Voice, the annual poster design col­lab­o­ra­tion between AIGA Colorado and VSA of Colorado/Access Gallery. The pro­gram matches graphic design­ers and teen artists with dis­abil­i­ties for a multi-session poster design and men­tor­ing work­shop, which cul­mi­nates in an gallery exhibition.

There will be a reception/orientation for design­ers on Wednesday, May 22 from 5:30-7pm at Access Gallery, 909 Santa Fe Drive.

The work­shops will be held at the gallery on 3 Wednesdays: June 12^th, 19^th and 26^th from 12 — 1pm, result­ing in a poster exhi­bi­tion on Friday, July 19^th at 6pm.

For more infor­ma­tion and to secure your spot, RSVP by Monday, May 20 to Amy Siegel. E-mail amy_siegel@gensler.com or call 303.893.7196.

COME JOIN AN EXCITING NEW OPPORTUNITY FOR OUR ART COMMUNITY!
VOLUNTEER AT ARTSTIR DENVER, OUR NEW PARTNER, THIS MEMORIAL WEEKEND!

Have some fun and vol­un­teer your time to help our cre­ative com­mu­nity. See and enjoy great art and music. Besides the won­der­ful expe­ri­ence of being part of the inau­gural year for this event, you also get a ridicu­lously rad look­ing and some great swag. Swag for AIGA Colorado will be a nice dona­tion to the Robert Taylor Scholarship Fund.

Held this Memorial Weekend at The Pavilions, ArtStir is host to artists (you may want to sign up for your own booth), fam­i­lies and music lovers.

As a vol­un­teer, there are many oppor­tu­ni­ties where you can give your time and sup­port; whether it’s at reg­is­tra­tion, help­ing in the inter­ac­tive areas, or assist­ing artists with set up. Each vol­un­teer will have 3 to 4-hour shifts, and as we like every­one to have the free­dom of choice, you can pick the shift time that works best for you. Plus you get FREE park­ing at the Pavillions.

Bring your fam­ily and join the excite­ment! Become an AIGA Colorado/ArtStir Denver Volunteer by sign­ing up below. It’s an awe­some oppor­tu­nity to meet new peo­ple, get involved with your local com­mu­nity and help spread the Art Scene through­out Denver.

At Craftworks: Build a Bento Box, we had an entire indus­trial kitchen and team of chefs to our­selves at the Art Institute Culinary School. We learned some basic cook­ing tech­niques to pre­pare the basic ingre­di­ents for a Bento Box style lunch that included rice, meat skew­ers, tem­pura, and sal­ads (includ­ing the secrets to the cov­eted Japanese carrot-ginger salad dressing).

Once the food was all pre­pared, the class (and some of the chefs) got their hands dirty and started mold­ing, dye­ing, and cut­ting their food into fun char­ac­ters. Check out some of the results!

We look for­ward to see­ing you at the next Craftworks event!

Cause Related
Friday, July 19^th 2013
VSA Access Gallery

Be the change you wish to see in the world.  - Gandhi

The poster has become a legit­i­mate and pow­er­ful tool in the areas of social jus­tice and edu­ca­tion issues in the world and we as design­ers have the power to cre­ate change.

For the last 6 years, VSA Colorado/Access Gallery has part­nered with AIGA Colorado to present the Giving Voice pro­gram, which empow­ers teens with dis­abil­i­ties to tell the world some­thing important.

This year we want YOU to tell the world some­thing impor­tant! We are call­ing all artists, graphic design­ers, illus­tra­tors, and cre­atives to design a poster to be exhib­ited on July 19^th at the Access Gallery in Denver. We are look­ing for 2 – 3 prints of a poster you have designed with a mes­sage cen­tered around social jus­tice issues.

On Friday, July 19^th, Access Gallery will host an exhi­bi­tion of the posters designed by the Giving Voice stu­dents along with the entries we receive from local and nation­ally known graphic design­ers. All prints on exhibit will be up for sale at the open­ing, with all of the pro­ceeds going back to the Giving Voice pro­gram! The exhi­bi­tion will be up through August with an expected atten­dance of more than 5,000 vis­i­tors to expe­ri­ence the show.

If you want to show the world what change can look like, fol­low these easy steps:

1: Register: E-mail damon@accessgallery.org to reg­is­ter and for full details

2: Donate a poster: Ship 2 – 3 prints, one of which must be signed, to VSA/Access Gallery by July 12^th. Address them to:

Damon McLeese
VSA Access Gallery
909 Santa Fe Drive
Denver, CO 80204

For more infor­ma­tion about VSA Colorado and Access Gallery, please visit http://accessgallery.orgSocial

We hope that you will take part in sup­port­ing the Giving Voice pro­gram so that it can con­tinue to empower our youth to be a part of the con­ver­sa­tion, and we’re look­ing for­ward to see­ing your amaz­ing posters!

If you are a stu­dent we have a great oppor­tu­nity for you to get involved in ArtStir Denver to dis­play and sell your art through our stu­dent art bin! ArtStir Denver 2013 is a cre­ative art mar­ket exclu­sively show­cas­ing Colorado cre­atives designed to stir up the artist in all of us with a spir­ited blend of Colorado art, music and style. Featured works include paint­ings, sculp­ture, pho­tog­ra­phy, illus­tra­tion, tex­tiles, fur­nish­ings, wood, mixed media and more.

• Event Dates: Friday, May 24, 2013: 4 pm – 8 pm
  Saturday, May 25, 2013: 11 am – 8 pm
  Sunday, May 26, 2013: 11 am – 6 pm
  Monday, May 27, 2013: 11 am – 6 pm
• Event Location: ArtStir Denver 2013 will be held at the Denver Pavilions in Downtown Denver, along Glenarm Place between 15^th and 17^th streets, and adja­cent sur­face park­ing lots over the Memorial Day weekend.

• Booth lay­out: Booth spaces are approx­i­mately 10’ wide by 10’ deep. Each tent will be shared by 3 stu­dent artists. Displays must be pro­fes­sional and aes­thet­i­cally pleas­ing.   Artists dis­play all works at their own risk. ArtStir Denver 2013 is not respon­si­ble for dam­age, theft or loss of an Artist’s prop­erty, or per­sonal injury result­ing from par­tic­i­pa­tion in ArtStir Denver 2013.

• Booth fees: $100 per stu­dent for the full 4 days. Fees include 2 — 8 foot skinny tables, 2 table cloths, one 10’ x 10’ white tent and 3 fold up chairs. If you don’t like the idea of shar­ing a booth you can get your own booth at a stu­dent dis­count of $300.
• Qualifications:
  1. Artwork must be orig­i­nal in con­cept, design, and exe­cu­tion.
  2. All work must be for sale.
  3. Students must pro­vide proof that they are a stu­dents at a Colorado school
  4. All artists must occupy their respec­tive booths for the dura­tion of the event.

REGISTER TODAY!  Call 303.515.4844 or email ArtStirDenver@ArtStirDenver.com

Are you inter­ested in help­ing to design the iden­tity of Colorado?

Making Colorado is now accept­ing appli­ca­tions for the “Making Colorado Creative Team,” a one-of-a-kind col­lab­o­ra­tive team made up of 12 pro­fes­sional design­ers and copy­writ­ers from Colorado that will help Governor Hickenlooper bring to life a new brand for the state. The cre­ative team will be led by Dave Schiff, founder of Made Movement along with Alex Bogusky, AdWeek’s Creative Director of the Decade, serv­ing as cre­ative advisor.

Making Colorado is the most inclu­sive, col­lab­o­ra­tive and ambi­tious brand­ing effort ever under­taken by a state. Rather than hir­ing a sin­gle “place brand­ing” agency to define Colorado, we’re tap­ping into the energy and exper­tise of indi­vid­u­als across the state, to build a brand for Colorado, by Colorado. This effort is being led by Aaron Kennedy, CMO of the State of Colorado and founder of Noodles & Company.

Applications will be accepted through April 29 and the final team will be announced on May 14.

Click here to apply or nom­i­nate some­one today.

Saturday, April 27^th, 2013
9:30am – 3pm
The Integer Group
7245 W Alaska Dr, Lakewood, CO 80226
$10 stu­dent mem­ber / $20 stu­dent non-member

AIGA Colorado and Art Directors Club of Denver are giv­ing stu­dents the chance to receive invalu­able feed­back on their port­fo­lio books from local art direc­tors and senior design­ers at The Review! We will have a morn­ing and after­noon review ses­sion with lunch pro­vided and a lunch panel dis­cus­sion of life after design school.

The Review is open to design and adver­tis­ing stu­dents at all lev­els in the Rocky Mountain region. We will be giv­ing away a $1000 schol­ar­ship to the top book in each ses­sion in addi­tion to prizes for run­ner up and hon­or­able men­tions from each session.

1^st prize: $1,000 schol­ar­ship
2^nd prize: $150  gift cer­tifi­cate to the Apple store
Honorable men­tion: $50 gift card to Meiningers

Register here

Yes, you read that right! We are shar­ing our awe­some local event, Bordo Bello with a brand new audi­ence this spring. 

AIGA Colorado is a chap­ter of a national orga­ni­za­tion: AIGA, the pro­fes­sional asso­ci­a­tion for design. We are one of 66 chap­ters around the nation and our head­quar­ters is located in New York City, on Fifth Avenue. Part of the loca­tion is the National Design Center that fea­tures a gallery open to the pub­lic through­out the year.

Recently we have been asked by AIGA’s national office to show­case our extra­or­di­nary event, Bordo Bello in this space! Hot dig­gity dog!

It means that we have a won­der­ful oppor­tu­nity to high­light our cre­ative com­mu­nity and all that Bordo Bello rep­re­sents to a national and inter­na­tional audi­ence. We are so proud of every­thing we have achieved with this event and it is a true honor to be able to bring our event to NYC.

To do this we are hav­ing a hybrid exhi­bi­tion that is part silent auc­tion & fundraiser that fea­tures new art­work and part ret­ro­spec­tive with art­work from pre­vi­ous Bordo Bello events.

This exhi­bi­tion is like no other we have done with Bordo Bello in the past. It will be up for more then one night! The exhibit opens April 22 — July 3 – and has a open­ing recep­tion on Wednesday, May 8^th where we will bring our energy and excite­ment to NY to host this fundraiser.

Something that is also unique about this oppor­tu­nity is for us to col­lab­o­rate with other chap­ters. We have been closely work­ing with AIGA NY to get vol­un­teers, pro­mote and host the event. Also a new fea­ture of the fundraiser is that money raised will go back to each artist’s local AIGA chap­ter – some­thing no other chap­ter or event has ever done – to fund their local men­tor­ship activities.

This was so hard! To curate the decks from pre­vi­ous events we reviewed all the works from the past 5 years, pulled some of the most admired and desired, see if we knew who might own them and went from there. We didn’t find all the decks we wanted for the show, but that is ok – we have a very amaz­ing set of pieces by a wide vari­ety of artists.

For new art­work, we asked some of the artists locally who have con­sis­tently been an inte­gral part of Bordo Bello’s suc­cess for mul­ti­ple years.  National artists were also cho­sen from across the coun­try with the same intent – artist & design­ers we are inspired by and want share our expe­ri­ence with!

What is awe­some about this oppor­tu­nity is we get the chance to dis­play these skate­boards in a true museum fash­ion – and have it be avail­able for thou­sands of peo­ple to see. People who would have never been able to see these pieces, now can. It is also a huge oppor­tu­nity to show our artists in an art gallery on Fifth Ave. In addi­tion – this show will be up and cel­e­brated dur­ing NYC’s Design Week!

So, the exhibit will be up for about 10 weeks. April 22– July 3. Some fea­tures of the exhibit will include a Book Wall – where we have taken our cat­a­logs from the past 2 years and mounted them so peo­ple can check out the decks that we couldn’t bring to the show. The I Heart Denver Store was incred­i­ble in assist­ing in the devel­op­ment and exe­cu­tion of this process.

We also cre­ated a mini skatepark – using TechDecks and their sys­tem – for peo­ple to play with while vis­it­ing the exhibit. Just for fun we also branded some mini skate­boards with Bordo Bello’s offi­cial deck art from the past shows. We want to thank Design Platform & Soapoint Graphics for their help in mak­ing this happen.

And the most excit­ing thing is, we have part­nered with Mohawk Paper to cre­ate a sub­stan­tial win­dow instal­la­tion with local artists Harikrisnan Panicker and Deepti Nair.

We couldn’t bring this to NYC with­out hav­ing some fun dur­ing our open­ing night! The open­ing recep­tion & silent auc­tion will be Wednesday, May 8^th. We would love to see Coloradoans make a mass pil­grim­age to the event. But in case that can’t hap­pen – we will be offer­ing some of the new decks to be bid on via eBay, as we nor­mally do.

We are thrilled to be throw­ing a party in con­junc­tion with AIGA/NY and work with them to make this hap­pen. AIGA Colorado is look­ing for­ward to shar­ing this expe­ri­ence with a brand new audi­ence. So per the usual, Bordo Bello is doing it’s thing — going big and cel­e­brat­ing it’s cre­ative community.

You may be ask­ing. Are we hav­ing a Bordo Bello in CO this fall then? Probably not – much of the team has been focused on this event this cal­en­dar year. But that doesn’t mean it can’t hap­pen! We are cur­rently look­ing for an event direc­tor for a Fall or Spring event – so if you are will­ing to par­tic­i­pat­ing at that level, please let us know.

AIGA Colorado can not tell you enough how proud and hon­ored we are of all of you who helped us make this hap­pen. It is all of your excite­ment, energy, time, inspi­ra­tion, and tal­ent that has brought Bordo Bello to a national level.

AIGA’s national design cen­ter has never seen any­thing like what we are bring­ing to them. Our chap­ter has been able to bring together a col­lec­tion of artists that would never have been shown together – or maybe at all – in a gallery set­ting. This col­lec­tion is an impor­tant tes­ta­ment to what our com­mu­nity offers in col­lab­o­ra­tion and col­lec­tive enthu­si­asm for improv­ing our world around us.

Thank you for mak­ing it hap­pen and we are hon­ored to rep­re­sent these efforts and be AIGA Colorado.

Did you miss out on the Robert Taylor AIGA CO Scholarship? Here’s a great oppor­tu­nity from Adobe. The Adobe Design Achievement Awards is giv­ing away up to $5,000 and soft­ware to win­ners. Don’t miss this oppor­tu­nity! Deadline is April 12, 2013.

Click here to reg­is­ter.

AIGA Colorado is pleased to announce the 2013 Robert Taylor Scholarship Finalists and Winners. Thank you to all who applied and we look for­ward to the 2014 Scholarship Competition.

Gustavo Esquinca

2013 Robert Taylor Scholarship Winner

What piece of advice would you give to an aspir­ing designer to help them be successful?

• Be resource­ful, be informed and be aware that noth­ing in design is right or wrong, or good or bad… It just is.
• Constraints make design eas­ier… so define them. Embrace them to be suc­cess­ful, and look beyond them to chal­lenge yourself.
• Stay true to who you are; Personality goes a long way.
• Design is about peo­ple. Be accessible.

Jarrod Joplin

2^nd Place Winner

What piece of advice would you give to an aspir­ing designer to help them be successful?

• Meet other design­ers. School pro­vides a great intro­duc­tion plat­form for stu­dents to engage pro­fes­sion­als. Find those stu­dios and firms that inspire you and ask to have a edu­ca­tional inter­view with the art and cre­ative directors.
• Join AIGA,
• join Art Directors Club.
• Subscribe to Communication Arts, HOW and any other of the design related publications.

Kacey Underwood

Scholarship Finalist

What piece of advice would you give to an aspir­ing designer to help them be successful?

A hard or long week can be punc­tu­ated by even a moment of pow­er­ful inspi­ra­tion. Inspiration may come from design blogs, online port­fo­lios, pub­li­ca­tions, respected his­tor­i­cal works, indi­vid­ual design­ers, and friendly competition.

Steven Parisi

Scholarship Finalist

What piece of advice would you give to an aspir­ing designer to help them be successful?

I’d express clearly that no designer do work for free! Even if it’s meant to end up in their port­fo­lio. In our indus­try, we need to have a com­mon goal of see­ing the value in our own work and pass­ing that along to clients and employers.

Jacob Trahan

Scholarship Finalist

What piece of advice would you give to an aspir­ing designer to help them be successful?

If I could give any bud­ding designer, who is seek­ing a piece of advice about design, it would be to go out there and explore the indus­try and the world of ever expan­sive, elu­sive, Graphic Design.

Silvia Minguzzi

Scholarship Finalist

What piece of advice would you give to an aspir­ing designer to help them be successful?

I real­ized that I need to believe in the company’s mis­sion to be sat­is­fied. I cre­ate bet­ter designs when I’m engaged in my work not only from an artis­tic point of view, but from an intel­lec­tual and social stand point.