Reflections on the AIGA Design Conference, Education, and the Responsibility of Creative Citizenship
Lee-Sean Huang – Co-Executive Director, Learning + Programs at AIGA
Giulia Donatello – Design Competitions and Event Manager at AIGA
Lefteris Heretakis – Host of Design Education talks podcast
The 2025 AIGA Design Conference is happening in Los Angeles from October 9th to 11th, and it’s not just any conference—it’s the 40th anniversary! This is the place to be for three days of inspiration, connection, and professional growth. As a listener of our podcast, you get an exclusive 15% discount on your ticket. Use the code DESIGNEDUCATIONPODCAST when you register. Find the direct link HERE. It’s a fantastic opportunity for growth, and we’d love for our community to be there. We hope to see you in LA!
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When we speak of design as performance, what do we mean?
Not the theatrics of branding. Not the pantomime of pitches or portfolio polish. Not the circus of speculative futures presented on sterile stages. No. We’re talking about something else entirely. Something quieter, slower, and much more consequential.
In this episode of Design Education Talks, I had the opportunity to speak with Lee-Sean Huang, Co-Executive Director of Learning + Programs at AIGA, and Giulia Donatello, Design Competitions and Event Manager, about the 2025 AIGA Design Conference, its 40-year legacy, and the future we’re all implicated in — whether we show up or not.
This year’s conference takes place in Los Angeles from October 9–11, marking four decades of convening the American design community. But unlike anniversaries that simply celebrate the past, this one leans forward. It asks: Who belongs in design today? What must design education become? And what does performance really demand of us?
You’re invited to attend. As a listener of our podcast, you can get 15% off your ticket with the code DESIGNEDUCATIONPODCAST. Register here. But more than that, you’re invited to engage — with ideas, people, provocations.
Because this isn’t a show. It’s a rehearsal for what comes next.
Design’s Many Stages
The theme for this year’s AIGA Design Conference is Design and Performance, a phrase loaded with meaning. Performance can be virtuosic. But it can also be exhausting, iterative, political. We perform as designers, yes — but also as colleagues, teachers, freelancers, critics, advocates, caregivers, and sometimes simply as survivors of a shifting, pressurised industry.
What Lee-Sean and Giulia offer, in a refreshingly honest conversation, is not promotional bluster but an invitation to rethink how we show up — for our students, our communities, and our practice.
This year’s programming embraces multiple formats: workshops, design dialogues, immersive sessions. But more importantly, it disrupts the old keynote model. A new hybrid curation structure blends invited voices with open calls — surfacing perspectives we don’t always hear, especially from young designers, educators, and those whose work doesn’t easily fit into neat categories.
Because let’s face it: we don’t need more design celebrities. We need witnesses. Co-conspirators. People who care.
Education as a Practice of Belonging
What struck me most in our conversation wasn’t the impressive list of speakers or the well-oiled logistics. It was the quiet reverence for design education — not as an institution, but as a relational practice.
“AIGA sees educators as a major pillar of its mission,” Lee-Sean shared. But this isn’t lip service. It’s reflected in discounted tickets, educator-focused programming, and spaces for students to speak to the profession, not just listen about it.
But design education can no longer afford to be extractive or passive. We spoke about the dangers of portfolio sameness — the endless loop of Dribbble aesthetics and ‘client briefs’ that replicate rather than interrogate. Giulia noted that in competition submissions, “So many of them look the same.” That’s not a student’s failure — it’s ours.
We urgently need learning environments that prioritise:
- Original voice over visual polish
- Context over trend
- Feedback over metrics
- Time to reflect, to fail, and to try again
In short, education that makes room for people to become who they are — not what the market wants.
The Performance of Learning
We also unpacked something few conferences dare to touch: the inner life of the designer.
In a field obsessed with outputs, we often forget the inner scaffolding that makes those outputs possible — stillness, curiosity, rituals of attention. “Create a routine of silence in your day,” Lee-Sean advised. And I couldn’t agree more.
Design education today must teach students not only how to design, but how to live a designed life. One that’s not consumed by screens or self-promotion. One that includes:
- The ability to say no
- The courage to leave gaps
- The wisdom to pause, listen, observe
That’s not performance in the theatrical sense. That’s performance as presence. And it’s what the world — and our students — are most hungry for.
Alternative Paths, Shared Futures
We also discussed the rise of bootcamps, short courses, and self-directed learning as viable (and sometimes necessary) routes into the profession. These aren’t threats to academia — they are symptoms of a system that has become too rigid, too expensive, and often too divorced from lived realities.
What if traditional design schools could learn from the agility of bootcamps, while bootcamps could embrace the depth of studio-based learning? What if we reimagined education not as a product, but as a public utility — slow, reflective, equitable?
AIGA’s programming this year seems to echo that aspiration. There’s an urgency not to just gather, but to question. To resist the flattening of design into content. To reclaim its civic, social, and poetic possibilities.
Design for Public Good Is Not Optional
Another central theme was civic engagement — not as an afterthought, but as an essential facet of design literacy.
Designers are increasingly involved in public infrastructure, health communication, climate advocacy, education systems, election design, and more. But many still struggle to speak this language — or even see these domains as ‘design.’
If you are a designer who wants your work to matter beyond the screen, the conference is a place to meet others who feel the same. AIGA is actively curating projects and talks around design for public good, challenging the tired narratives of design as commerce and instead positioning it as care, service, and intervention.
Because the ultimate performance isn’t what happens on stage — it’s what happens afterwards, when we return to our classrooms, communities, and clients with clearer eyes and deeper commitments.
Designing the Conditions for Growth
So — why go to a conference? Why fly across the country? Why gather at all, when we could just stream talks online?
Because design, at its core, is relational. We need to be in rooms together — with strangers, with critics, with mentors. We need friction. Serendipity. Challenge. We need to see and be seen.
This conference offers exactly that: a living ecosystem of exchange. You might meet a future collaborator. Hear a talk that shifts your teaching. Witness a young designer asking the question you’ve been afraid to name.
That’s performance too. Not polished. But real.
Join Us in LA — With 15% Off
The 2025 AIGA Design Conference is happening in Los Angeles from 9–11 October, and it’s a chance to be part of something larger than yourself — a profession in transition, a community in conversation, and a world in need of good design.
🎟 Use code DESIGNEDUCATIONPODCAST for 15% off your ticket. Register here.
🎧 Listen to the full episode wherever you get your podcasts.
Because performance isn’t about applause. It’s about presence. And we need you there.
If You’re Short on Time, Remember This:
- Design is performance — not spectacle, but practice.
- Educators matter — not just as mentors, but as culture-shapers.
- Sameness is a warning sign — not a benchmark.
- Civic design is the future — not a niche.
- Silence is part of the process — not a weakness.
- Education needs reimagining — urgently.
- You’re invited — because the future of design belongs to those who show up.
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Where to Find More
Since its inception in 2019, Design Education Talks podcast has served as a dynamic platform for the exchange of insights and ideas within the realm of art and design education. This initiative sprang from a culmination of nearly a decade of extensive research conducted by Lefteris Heretakis. His rich background, intertwining academia, industry, and student engagement, laid the foundation for a podcast that goes beyond the conventional boundaries of educational discourse. Support the Show 👉https://www.patreon.com/thenewartschool Equipment used to produce the podcast: 👉https://kit.co/heretakis/podcasting See our work on 👉https://linktr.ee/thenewartschool Follow us on twitter at 👉@newartschool Read our latest articles at 👉https://heretakis.wordpress.com/ and 👉https://heretakis.medium.com/ and 👉 https://odysee.com/@thenewartschool:c
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