Guest post by Ricardo Rodriguez
Born and raised in Orlando, I have learned that in this City Beautiful, even if you have been here for 22 years, many things still aren’t exactly obvious. Orlando is a city that waits for you to come to it, for you to explore all these organizations and events, and for you to find out where the best beer is located. This city is like a good teacher: It allows you to develop your own sense of discovery. Each AIGA Orlando meeting opens the eyes of local designers a little bit more to each other and to the things we are doing, and that is one of the best things about coming to these meetings.
It was great to hear another wonderful talk from another AIGA Chapter, this time Baltimore. As AIGA Orlando grows, I hope we continue growing relationships with other chapters, and continue the exchange of ideas to help make our city better. Opening these meetings up to the public have been great, giving us more perspective of what this community is all about. This event’s ice breaker, which involved introducing to everybody in the room to a random attendee, was a great way to give us more stories about designers in our area, with their diverse backgrounds and history, and their unique viewpoints that can help make Orlando a better place for design.
Hopefully AIGA Orlando continues to strive to get more people of diverse backgrounds and occupations involved in the community. Not only will that open it up to make it easier to hire designers in the city, but it will help designers gain a level of positive notoriety in the city, similar to how design is upheld in Raleigh, North Carolina. As designers get hungrier for more than just a job, like those many designers interested in social justice causes, opportunities will rise to take a role of positive leadership in the community. This is only reflective of what I’ve learned in the drive and details from locals at a small ice breaker, as well — imagine what will happen as we take on community projects!
Overall this meeting, while smaller than the ones during the summer, showed the gems of designers, students, and more that live in this city. Orlando currently has many hidden secrets; our job as designers is to communicate such things in a profound and beautiful way for all people. As time moves on, I hope we will participate in this beautiful revealing of a wonderful city with even more wonderful people.
Upcoming Events
Letter Together: Hand Lettering Workshop with Shauna Panczyszyn – September 11th
Join us as we learn the basics of lettering, and put together your own lettering art with real time feedback from Shauna Lynn Panczyszyn. In this workshop you will learn how to combine different styles of lettering into beautiful work, how to incorporate vintage lettering as research for letterforms, and ways to incorporate illustration with your lettering. More information here.
Creative Connection Student Showcase – September 17th – October 9th
This is a great opportunity for students and recent grads. The Creative Connection Student Showcase is taking submissions until September 17th. More information coming soon.
GUTS – October 18th
GUTS is a friendly pumpkin carving competition that was organized and created by CRAFTED, a marketing agency in Charlotte, North Carolina, and is co-hosted alongside AIGA. GUTS has now gone national, with the 1st ever GUTS Orlando pumpkin carving competition, hosted by AIGA Orlando. The primary goal of this event is to unify the creative community in support of the kids who fight the real fight everyday at Make-A-Wish® Central and Northern Florida. More information here.
Ricardo Rodriguez is currently a student in the graphic design program at the University of Central Florida. He strives to combine writing, design, and illustration to better communicate new ideas of design and design history.
