2009 Year-end Review from AGDA QLD Chapter President

2nd February, 2010

QLD a busy year with many exciting events and initiatives


In Queensland, we continued to hold the popular Back 2 Basics events each month on a Saturday morning. The TALK events with guest speakers also continued to be popular and maintained high attendance numbers. One of the highlights being Claudio Kirac.

The AGDA Queensland Student Council continued to thrive and delivered a number of events to the student community. They have also been working on an extended project in partnership with KW Doggett which will be completed by the end of the year. The Student Council is made up of representatives from QCA, Southbank Institute, Design College Australia and Sunshine Coast University.

We were fortunate to have two International Speaker Tours this year. Kris Sowersby, type designer from New Zealand and Barbara Glauber, graphic designer from New York. Both toured nationally and were highly successful. Sponsors involved with these tours were very happy with their participation and have indicated continued support for AGDA in the future.

There was continued effort and a large investment of time into building further relationships with Queensland Government. This resulted in partnering with Arts Queensland to deliver a high profile event in August featuring two international guest speakers... Don Ryun Chang from Korea and David Berman from Canada. Both guests also serve on the board for Icograda, International Council of Graphic Design Associations. The event was extremely successful and contributed to raising AGDA's profile with government.

The AGDA website continues to expand and generate more interest from industry, business and government. Visits to the website have increased every month with recent analytics documenting the upward trend from 32 000 in April to 46 000 in August, of which 28 600 were unique visitors.

The AGDA Weekly Update is sent every Tuesday night and this week encouraged 4 000 visitors to the website the following day. Individual and studio profiles are available to all members as well as classified advertising opportunites. More investment is being planned to promote the directories as a resource to design buyers. Many designers are already seeing benefits and acquiring new clients via the designer directories. Outside Australia, the strongest country traffic emanates in order from USA, UK, NZ, China, India and Canada.

The AGDA Strategic Plan has been an area of key focus for the National Council during the past six months. We devoted two intense and rewarding days in the past months to strategy planning, coming away with excellent outcomes-all of which will be shared, discussed and implemented by newly elected councils for the coming year.

Alliances continue and in some cases have been newly formed with the following:AGIdeas, Australian Design Council, Designers Accord, Desktop, DG Graphics, Semi-Permanent
AGDA is currently working in partnership with Icograda to host an Icograda Design Week in Brisbane in October 2010. This will be one of three Design Weeks in 2010, the other two being held in Vancouver and Madrid.

This will be a week long international design event focusing on professional development and the value of design to business, the community and the economy. The Design Week will comprise of:
- two day international conference
- two days focussing on design and business - design trade fair
- workshops - social events and exhibitions
- and the week will culminate with the 10th AGDA National Biennial Awards.

The event is strongly supported by Queensland Government and Brisbane Marketing. This will be the first design event of its kind in Brisbane, and so it is very exciting for us as host.

Once again this year, AGDA has been greatly supported by numerous sponsors and friends. We continue to be grateful to them all in helping us deliver to our members and really value their continued support and partnership. Particular thanks also to Southbank Institute, Design College Australia, QCA and Sunshine Coast University for allowing us to use their facilities and spaces throughout the year.

The year's events and initiatives have only been made possible due to the dedication of time and effort by the AGDA Queensland Council. I would personally like to express my huge thanks to them for their great support and contribution this year, my second year as President. Paul van Barneveld, Vice President, Paul Vesey-Brown, Treasurer, Tania Daly, Secretary, Clint Harvey, Marcos Caycho, Samantha Gaghan, Jenna Wall, Jeffrey Beitz, Matt Blair, Michelle Madden, our Queensland Administration Officer, who makes everything happen behind the scenes.

And of course the AGDA Queensland Student Council.Jess Leonidou, Diana Pasovski, Tahlia McBride, Sam Hall, Maria Radun, Lesley Morris, Alisha van Kimmenade, Zara Monteith, Alicia Grady and Asiya Muldabayeva.

In addition we've had many helpers including Katherine May, David Sargent, Deb Livingstone, Jodi Edwards and Carolyn Morgan... many thanks and appreciation for their continued support also.

Tanja Hall

AGDA QLD Chapter President