2013 Calendar | AIGA Mentor Program Project
Written by Monina Velarde
I had the fun opportunity of leading a mentor group for the Chicago AIGA Mentor Program. It’s a fantastic program that joins local creatives together to collaborate, tour studios, share resources or just meet up to talk about design and hang out. The group I worked with was particularly interested in collaborating on a project. We had many initial ideas on what we could do – a group poster, a website, creating a design structure for an environment, etc. Eventually, we all agreed that we wanted to work on something that allowed us to express our personal styles, but also something that worked as a whole.
After many meetings at Filter Cafe, our final project ended up being a calendar for 2013. Each of us designed a month or two and illustrated what that particular month looks and feels to us. All in all, I’m really happy with what we accomplished. It was a 3 month process of sharing ideas, sketching and seeing our project come to life. My group was really awesome throughout and I feel lucky to have worked with them. There’s nothing better than working with creative, talented and enthusiastic people.
Design Credits:
David M Laskowski II, @dmltwo / April + July
Jenny Drucker, @Druckercreative / June + August
Katherina London, @ChiKatherina / January + March
Lisa Moran / May
Luis A Ibarra, @l_ibarra / October
Monina Velarde, @moninavelarde / September + December
Yasir Muhammad, @YasirBurney / February + November
Editor’s Note: This post originally appeared on Monina Velarde’s blog on January 2, 2013. Monina Velarde is a graphic designer based in Chicago. She received her design education at the Kansas City Art Institute, where she majored in graphic design and art history. Velarde has worked for DesignKitchen, Hallmark Cards Inc. and Hammerpress Letterpress, and she’s currently a senior visual designer at R/GA. Her work is often inspired by layers of color and geometric shapes and has been featured by AIGA, The New Yorker, Graphic Exchange and Design Work Life, among others.
