Anticipating IA’s Second EGD Week

​October 11, 2018

As we head into our second annual Experiential Graphic Design (EGD) Week in a few days, it is stimulating and energizing to see the passion and creative acumen of this group of individuals.

Two years ago the EGD practice organized into four committees to focus on fostering thought leadership, creative excellence, and ultimately drive the vision and growth of this area of IA’s expertise. Out of that structure EGD Week was born. Similar in model to a city’s design week, the EGD Innovate Committee, led by our Boston Studio Director, Amanda Badgley, identified that there was nothing like it in the industry. We were surprised and elated to have the opportunity and began mapping out a strategy.

An Inclusive Platform

EGD Week is a platform for sharing practice expertise, engaging with colleagues firm-wide, inspiring project innovation, and elevating the “One IA” integrated design approach. In its inaugural year EGD week was extremely successful in providing a scalable model and approach to inform, inspire, and engage 650+ colleagues firm-wide down to the local office/individual level.

Various members of the EGD team volunteered to plan and develop content for a week long immersion showcasing the best in experiential design, brand strategy, graphic design, and creative technology. The programming included daily presentations focusing on thought leadership in which the entire firm could participate, daily workshops focusing on EGD expertise, and also extended to others who expressed interest. Local events throughout the week focused on engaging offices with EGD studios in creatively based activities such as tours, hand-lettering, and other activities.

And although our first ever EGD Week did not focus on external engagement, we did successfully define #EGDweek within social media.

As EGD week evolves, we are focused on not only informing, inspiring and engaging our colleagues, but also our industry peers, clients, and potential partners. With this goal in mind, we decided to expand our audience and share our thoughts and processes via a live, interactive webinar.

Experiential design is being incorporated more and more as part of our everyday. From a visit to an art gallery to booking a conference room at the office, from traveling through an airport to going to see your favorite band in concert, experiential design takes many forms. As EGD becomes more prevalent in our industry, our clients are constantly asking us how to successfully plan and build the right experience.

EGD Week at its core is an opportunity to educate and share best practices that elevate our creative delivery as design teams in order to provide a compelling and effective workplace for our clients.  We work with multiple teams for a variety of clients. Every project team is an opportunity to create exceptional creative. We are in a unique position to connect the dots from one project to the next, one industry trend to the next and ensure that our teams are constantly innovating.

As we evolve and grow the EGD practice within IA, we strive to blur the lines between space and storytelling. We consider it our mission to design experiences that require multidisciplinary thinking, benefit from a global perspective, and incorporate strategic and scientific findings to make lives less tethered, less complicated, and more enjoyable. As such, we embrace EGD Week as an opportunity to share those beliefs, and, starting with this year’s webinar, as an opportunity to hear back from others on how we all can further the conversation.