Learn new skills while teaching old ones. Connect with like-minded professionals—and help connect like-minded professionals. Reach your true potential by helping others reach theirs.

What it is

The AIGA Chicago Mentorship Program is a celebrated gathering of creative people from across disciplines and industries to share insights, experiences and resources while making new connections, exchanging inspiration and even collaborating on a project or two.

It’s an amazing way to get more involved in Chicago’s rich creative community and to gain greater access to the wealth of professional opportunities it has to offer.

How it works

The Fall session will kickoff on September 11th and last until November 20th, with a total of 11 meetings every Wednesday evening. You’ll meet with your mentor group every other week (Five times total), with studio tours, workshops and a portfolio review during the off weeks. We will also organize a wrap-up party to celebrate our work!

Participants work in groups comprising a spectrum of creative fields and career levels, organized by shared interest. At our kickoff session, you will hear from the mentors and choose your top three group choices, then assigned by order of registration for the event until each group hits capacity.

*TICKET FEES COVER THE ENTIRE PROGRAM, NOT JUST THE KICKOFF EVENT*

+ Navigating a Creative Career in Corporate America: You’ve gotten that job you were interested in and it’s in a corporate environment...how do you navigate all those other moving pieces?

+ Improving Your Portfolio: Develop solid case studies and improve your portfolio. We have 2 different groups for this topic.

+ Women In Design: Focusing on the great aspects, the difficult aspects, and everything in between for people who identify as a woman in design.

+ Collaborate on a Group Digital Project: Work through the process of making a digital product from creating a brief through to the creation of a digital product.

+ Design Tool-belt: Focus on expanding your skillset as a designer covering a range of skills from networking, to creating type or hand lettering, through to executing a final project and many things in between.

+ Diversity in Design: Defining what this is in the industry and how this topic impacts you, your career, and the community as a whole.

+ Creative Entrepreneurship & the Art of the Side Hustle: How to take your side hustle and your passion with a little business acumen and bring it to life.

+ Design Systems: All about design systems form the why to the how and all of the questions in between.

+ Prototyping with Proto.io: Creating UI designs in sketch or Figam then building out a working interactive prototype with proto.io.

+ Design Confidence: Let’s push our confidence to the next level of comfort. Let’s stand out and showcase our work so hiring managers and clients can see what our worth through our design is.

More details on each group can be found here: https://chicago.aiga.org/mentorship/mentor-program/