What were we thinking?
Turn back the clock to 1983, when one of the first AIGA chapters was established in San Francisco. As the professional organization for design, AIGA serves as a network for designers, supports design education, provides programming, and is an advocate for design as a strategic tool in the business community.
Helping lead the effort over 25 years ago was Linda Hinrichs, the San Francisco chapter’s first president. By her account, at the time nobody really knew what they were doing. There were no funds, no history, and only a few design “stars.” There were, however, many who wanted to establish a design presence equal to that of New York City. As Chuck Bryne, former AIGA Event Chair would later recall, “The second National AIGA conference in San Francisco made it clear the center of graphic design moved West.” Since its founding, the San Francisco AIGA has grown to be one of the largest in the country.
Last year, recent AIGA SF president Amy Gustincic was tasked with cleaning and organizing the chapter’s storage unit. While doing so, Amy uncovered a rich history and began archiving past event projects, photographs, meeting notes, and interviews. This effort happened to coincide with the impending 25th anniversary of the chapter, and ultimately led to the idea of a 25th Anniversary book. Weymouth Design was approached by AIGA SF to design the book, and we readily accepted the project. Our creative team of Arvi Raquel-Santos, Bob Kellerman, Jenny Pan, Rob Villanueva, and Shasta Garcia was off and running.
The anniversary book, titled What were we thinking?, tells the story of AIGA SF and the evolution of graphic design in the Bay Area. Key sections include essays from past presidents and board members, a seismic timeline of important events and milestones, and a visual history of the past 25 years of design programming. Since we were designing for designers, we had the opportunity to push the creativity and employ a more unusual array of paper and production techniques, such as blind embossing, French-folded pages, and utilization of the translucency of vellum to provide a visually interesting type design effect.
Like the AIGA SF chapter, Weymouth Design decided to establish a West Coast presence by opening our San Francisco office in 2003. Considered a design mecca along with New York City, the location was ideal. The Bay Area was also fertile ground for unlimited business opportunities: stretching south through Silicon Valley were hundreds of biotech and high-tech start-ups, as well as numerous investment firms.
This is how it went: Research office space. Sign the lease. Design the floor plan. Make a list of equipment and furniture. Buy the items on the list. Set up the work stations. Organize the printed samples. Turn on the phones. Spend days on end mailing and making cold calls. Wait for the phone to ring…and wait. During many of those quiet afternoons, one might have also heard a rhetorical, “What were we thinking?” Yet if it wasn’t for the inspiration and ambition of a few San Francisco designers 25 years ago, it’s likely that we would not be where we are today.
