Weekend graphic design conference draws more than 100 participants

The Student Design Agency hosted its fourth-annual graphic design conference, titled "Reach: Design Across the Social Spectrum,” on Saturday in McCormick Hall.

The conference focused on the ways in which graphic design targets different audiences and how these trends relate to the socioeconomic status of consumers.

“The goal of this particular conference was to encourage students and practicing designers to critically examine the function of the social composition of an audience in design,” Rose Nguyen ’12, Student Design Agency’s co-executive manager, said in an email.

She noted that “highly respected design campaigns and projects are for products or services geared toward privileged populations, and we wanted to ask ourselves why this might be.”

There were approximately 120 attendees, with more than 100 people on the wait list. The audience consisted primarily of students from others schools, many pursuing art degrees at either the undergraduate or graduate level at schools such as the Pratt Institute and the Rhode Island School of Design. However, 50 seats were reserved for Princeton students.

“Since we host in a small venue, we can't accommodate everyone who wants to come,” Carol Chen ’11, a member of the team that organized the conference, explained in an email.

“We wanted to bring graphic design to the Princeton community. There are many people interested in graphic design but not many ways here to experience it or learn more. By bringing in prominent design professionals and students from design programs around the country, we're hoping to create a forum for inspiration and to share ideas about the graphic design world,” she said.

This year’s conference included a lineup of seven speakers, including famous design experts Paula Scher, Chip Kidd and Debbie Millman. Other events included a breakfast was hosted in the lobby of the art museum, a giveaway of autographed design works such as books and posters, a champagne reception and a closing banquet.

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Maryam Patton ’14, who organized publicity for the event, expressed her excitement about the caliber of the speakers at the conference.

“It's hard to overstate their contributions to the field of graphic design, and we were very fortunate about their eager desire to come share their wisdom with us,” she said. “This is only our fourth conference yet, but we were getting professional publicity in some of the biggest design magazines and news outlets around. With the lineup we had this year, I'm certain our conference carries significant legitimacy in the design community as a serious and worthwhile event,” she said in an email.

Tiantian Zha ’13, another member of the team, said in an email the conference exposed her to the professional world of design.

“As someone who has a background in oil painting and more traditional [media] and who only got involved with graphic design recently, I found that the conference exposed me to what professionals do in their field and their concerns while making design decisions. It was interesting to hear about the social value of promoting quality design,” she explained.

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Overall, organizers said the conference was a great success.

“As far as I know, we've only ever had an overwhelmingly positive response,” organizer Alice Zheng ’13 said. “A lot of our attendees and speakers talk to us afterward to tell us how impressed they are with the planning and how professionally it was executed. My friends who came from another university were surprised that the conference was planned entirely by students.”

The first conference, hosted in 2008 and titled “UDesign,” focused on the message that everyone can learn design skills and contribute to design culture.

“The Student Design Agency was still young, but we were beginning to have a noticeable presence on campus,” Chen said of the initial idea for the conference. “Since Princeton didn't have a formal design curriculum, or any courses on graphic design, we wanted some way of bringing design culture to campus.”

The second conference was titled “Better: Design for Social Causes” and the 2010 conference was titled “Directions: Design in the Age of Technological Change.”

The Design Conference is funded by the Student Design Agency’s funds as well as contributions from the Carl A. Fields Center for Equality and Cultural Understanding, the Council of the Humanities, the Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Students, the Lewis Center for the Arts, the Princeton University Art Museum, Rockefeller College and the School of Architecture.