AIGA 2016 'Get Out The Vote' Design Campaign and Exhibition

AIGA is the largest and oldest professional organization for designers, with a 100+ year history, 72 chapters, and over 25,000 members nation-wide. For years they’ve been leveraging design community talent to 'get out the vote,' a non-partisan effort to inspire public participation in the electoral process, especially focused in the presidential election years. I served as project lead for the 2016 electoral cycle. The 2016 exhibition spotlighted new nationally curated, non-partisan Get Out the Vote posters, and promoted highlights of Design for Democracy efforts. The exhibition was premiered at our Galleries at CSU for the RNC convention, and then appeared in Philadelphia during the DNC convention, with more than 30 cities nation-wide using components to promote the initiative in the fall, leading up to the election. In addition, an extensive 'toolkit' was assembled for dissemination to AIGA Chapter leadership (more than 70 chapters nation-wide) in June 2016. The kit is intended to help AIGA chapters across the country plan events and activities around the posters generated through Get Out The Vote, with an ultimate goal of mobilizing the public to register and vote in the upcoming presidential election, and in elections after. It will remain in use, building upon best practices through future election cycles (including mid-term elections). This year for the first time ever AIGA established a relationship with the League of Women Voters, and GOTV curated posters and kit activities will were shared with their 700 chapters nationwide, making the campaign more public facing than ever before. Exhibition/campaign impact included: -50 custom posters solicited from design leaders across the country -700+ poster submissions solicited from a national call-for-entries -installation graphics about voter participation and ballot design clarity, animated infographics -feature as a Google Art Project -designs used at polling places across the country via League of Women Voters partnership -presence in RNC & DNC convention cities -components were used by 30+ AIGA chapters, hosting more than 50 events across the country, including GOTV activities in New York, Miami, Chicago, Los Angeles -one poster from the campaign, targeted at Latino voters and designed by Agustín Garza, became the PSA campaign “Este Año !Tu Voto Es Cosa Seria,” broadcast on TV Azteca (a major Spanish language television channel) over 4,300 times in the months leading to the election -microsite toolkit was developed to continue AIGA’s GOTV efforts, which include a NEA grant and plans to activate youth voters in 2018 midterm elections More information on the campaign go to: http://www.aiga.org/vote/