Associate Professor Robert Sedlack was a featured speaker at the national AIGA Gain conference in San Francisco in early October. The session, entitled "Implementing Social Change," focused on the work that Professor Sedlack and his undergraduate students are doing to combat xenophobia in South Africa.
At “Gain: AIGA Design for Social Value Conference” attendees heard design, business and social innovation leaders from a variety of industries share their visionary approaches to creating social value. Presenters demonstrated the broadening role design plays in institutional strategy, leadership, process and service, product and message, and how the creative attributes of designers provide special advantages to tackling socially relevant projects and enhancing the human experience.
Designers, businesses, organizations and governments recognize the need to take a holistic, human-centered approach to working in the greater world and acknowledge that they must create social value in order to succeed.
“Gain” showed that what designers do on a daily basis—create, communicate, strategize, analyze, translate, collaborate—is what puts them in the perfect position to build social value for their companies, clients and communities.