I finally broke down and shelled out the cash for a membership to AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Arts). It’s the Cadillac of professional design organizations in the U.S, and I’ve been wanting to join for quite awhile. I’m not sure why I’ve hesitated for so long (perhaps the nearly $300 charge for the professional membership), but I finally put a stop to it. Yes, I put my foot down with myself, cut the check and tossed my chip in with the other 20,000 or so designers who call themselves members.

So, what does $300 for an AIGA membership get you these days? To be honest, not a whole lot. There are some discounts, a newsletter, e-mail, etc., but I mainly got it because it gets me on the inside of many independent design related events that take place in the Northwest and across the country. What makes the $300 price so worth it are the avenues it opens for networking and collaboration, and a lot of that is made possible by that little grey card.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 7th, 2006 at 3:23 pm and is filed under Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.