My brand of Marxism and People Who Need People

 

“I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member.”

- Groucho Marx

“What professional organizations do you belong to and how are they helpful to your career? What organizations would you like to join?” is this week's prompt.

I don’t belong to any and I have yet to hear of any that spark my interest. AIGA would be an obvious choice, but I’m as fond of obvious choices as I am of organized groups with tithing or fee structures. So, that is to say, I’m not looking to join any in the near future.

Any exclusivity an organization like AIGA claims to offer is rendered mute by its size: 22,000 strong, with dozens of chapters (even in China). It’s hard to see how joining gives me as a design professional any real edge. To quote a member, Christopher Simmons, who blogs for the AIGA site, “If you want to be a brand, I tell clients, you must work from the inside out. A great logo isn’t going to make a shitty product any less shitty, any more than a hard worker is going to make a bad boss a compelling leader. “ And analogously, a membership in a professional organization won’t necessarily make one a better or meaningful designer or anything but $315 less wealthy. Merit and hard work will get me where I want to be, not people who need people, as lucky as they may be. Branding one’s self as “a professional in a design organization” is accessory at best, in my opinion.

I’m not into conventions and symposiums. Unless, hypothetically, I get paid to attend, opposed to paying for: entrance, a yearly membership fee and airfare. I know it’s tax deductable, but it just seems garishly unnecessary.  I’m social. It’s why I pay in excess for drinks and dining in bars as opposed to doing so alone, at home. I understand that advocacy of design is important. But doing so through a club seems like self-aggrandized preaching to the choir, or worse, to 22,000+ preachers.

Another case in point is DMI, which applies directly to me; again, an obvious choice. Design Management Institute bills itself as having, “earned a reputation worldwide as a multifaceted resource, providing invaluable know-how, tools and training through its conferences, seminars, membership program, and publications.” To whom, one might ask. Design managers, of course.

Perhaps I’m too young to appreciate a pillar of design society like AIGA. Perhaps I’m too rugged an individual to appreciate the safety-in-numbers, legitimacy-through-consensus and repetition that organizations like DMI provide. Overall, I’d like an organization to want more out of me than money. I like that in all my relationships.