The Seattle Chapter Board /
Each member of the AIGA Seattle Board of Directors brings expertise and enthusiasm to our local chapter. The Board works to help build, sustain, and enliven the design community in Seattle. In return for their time and dedication, board members are rewarded with unique opportunities for growth, both personal and professional.
Board members serve for two-year terms of office. Have you always wanted to be part of the AIGA Seattle Board, but couldn’t commit to two full years? For the first time this year we’ve created several new one-year positions for chairs of specific events, initiatives, or areas of responsibility. By creating these new opportunities, we hope to open the board to a wider range of our members.
If you think you’d like to be considered for a chair-level position or any other volunteer activities, please contact our Volunteer Director. Please bring your passion, ideas, and energy to help us make AIGA Seattle more dynamic, responsive, and valuable for all of us!
I've been active in AIGA since 1998 and joined the Seattle Board in 2009 serving as the Sponsorship Director. I have a strong vision for change in AIGA Seattle, making it broader, deeper and wider in all the touch points. Our membership is very diverse and as a result our ability to provide current, relevant content that enhances our sponsors contact with designers at all levels of their career. Stepping up our role in the design community means a stronger role for sponsors to align with AIGA Seattle and help forge lasting relationships with designers who are not only doing relevant work but also steering the industry.
Aaron is a passionate designer and design educator who attributes his success in the field to his love of all things design and his strong focus on the conceptual creative.
Aaron holds a BFA and MFA in Graphic Design from the Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia and has been working in the field along with teaching for over eight years. In addition to teaching full-time at the Art Institute of Seattle since 2008, Aaron is a freelancer with projects focused around web in addition to print.
Aaron has created a range of work for large brands like Target, Mississippi State, and NASCAR to small start-up companies. He has worked in publication houses, design agencies, and in-house for a large corporation. In addition he has had work featured in the New York Times, CMYK magazine, Communication Arts Visual, and Adobe. Aaron has also won a Silver Addy for his work when he partnered with Barefoot Design Group.
Aaron’s involvement in AIGA goes back to his days in college as an undergraduate and has evolved into the third of three board positions. The first position in the Charlotte, North Carolina chapter, where he served as the Education Coordinator for three years; since then he has served as Volunteer director for the Seattle chapter for the past two years.
Aaron has lived in Ohio, Georgia, Colorado, North Carolina, and now Washington. He is married and has a small cocker spaniel named Bella. When he is not teaching or designing he enjoys skiing, hiking, yoga, camping, fishing, basketball, boating, and pretty much anything active.
Send Aaron Shurts an EmailPractice Experience: Marty is a CPA at Sweeney Conrad, P.S., a public accounting firm in Bellevue, Washington. Since joining Sweeney Conrad in 2001, Marty has focused on providing value to his clients by understanding their needs. Marty provides tax compliance, planning and advisory services to high net worth individuals, entrepreneurs, non-profits and clients in industries such as real estate, manufacturing, construction, wholesaling, retailing, marketing, insurance, design and professional services such as doctors, dentists, architects and lawyers.
Affiliations: Washington Society of Certified Public Accountants, American Institute of Certified Public Accountants
Community Involvement: Marty participates in the Bellevue Chamber of Commerce Young Executives Program and has educated youth about financial literacy through the Junior Achievement Program.
Interests: Marty enjoys spending time with his family. However, when he's not chasing his two kids around, he spends the majority of his free time obsessing about the Washington Huskies football program.
Education: University of Washington - Undergrad, Golden Gate University - Masters
Jim spent the last 10 years with Getty Images, most recently holding down the fort as Design Director. His days (and more nights than he'd care to admit) were spent providing hands-on leadership to an award-winning team of in-house creatives in Seattle, New York and London, as well as overseeing a diverse roster of external agencies. He's currently freelancing as a Creative Director, collaborating with a variety of local studios and clients.
Jim came out of the design program at the University of Washington in 1995 with a whopping student loan and two degrees: a BFA in Graphic Design and a BA in Art based on his painting, drawing and photography work.
Now, with 15 years of experience under his belt, Jim’s diverse skill base runs the gamut from client relations, to creative strategy and straight through execution. His work spans web and digital, print, motion graphics and video, advertising, identity and brand development. And finally, Jim's long-term relationship with the AIGA as a member has now blossomed into service on the board.
While his true passion is design, booze (or more accurately mixology) follows as a close second. Jim can often be found cozied up to the bar, cocktail in hand, exchanging recipes with bartenders and regaling fellow patrons with tales of the great rum runners and obscure facts like the five (and ONLY five) ingredients used to make bourbon.
He lives in Ballard with his wife, young son and Leonberger, Lena.
And fear not, Jim seldom talks about himself in the third person like this.
Nina spent five years as Senior Designer at Worldstudio, a strategy and communications firm in NYC that builds bridges between clients and communities to enable positive social change. Nina created numerous identities, campaigns, publications, websites and environmental graphics for civic organizations, nonprofits and small businesses. While in New York, Nina was an active volunteer for AIGA as well as an AIGA/NY mentor.
Nina moved back to her hometown Seattle in April 2012 and is currently freelancing for a variety of clients, including most recently the Seattle Art Museum. Prior to moving to NYC, Nina specialized in corporate branding and annual report design at Fitch.
Nina graduated from the University of Washington with a BFA in Visual Communications Design. Her work has received awards from AIGA case/affect, Print Magazine and Blackbook AR 100 and has been featured in Just Design: Socially Conscious Design for Critical Causes and Common Interest: Documents.
Dave Miller is the Director of Recruiting for 24 Seven INC, a talent agency that helps Designers, Developers and Marketing professionals find both freelance and full time opportunities in the Seattle creative market place. When Dave’s not reviewing portfolio’s, coaching careers or making powerful introductions - he operates as a freelance designer, offering services that include Strategic Branding, Web and Print Design, Marketing, Messaging and Research. He lives in Capitol Hill with his wife Danielle and cat Bodhi. He’s known for making a great cocktail and owning to many plaid shirts.
Bryan Mamaril is a Senior Interactive Designer at Tether, an agency that crafts love affairs between brands and individuals. He works in a variety of mediums for clients such as Nordstrom, Starbucks, Teague, Coinstar, Al Gore, The Limited, Bill Gates C3, McKesson, The Coveteur and Lyfe Kitchen.
Bryan also teaches Intermediate Graphic Design at the School of Visual Concepts. His work has been recognized by PRINT, HOW, STEP, AIGA and the Seattle Show. He was awarded Most Persistent in kindergarten. When not designing, he's riding his motorcycle, rain or rain.
John Close is the principal and creative director of Push Design, a multi-disciplinary design studio located in downtown Seattle. With more than fifteen years of experience in branding, identity, print, and interactive, John has worked with clients such as Adobe, AIGA, Airborne Express (now dba DHL), Apple, Arcade, AT&T, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Icograda, Nordstrom, Nike, Nissan, Microsoft, Starbucks, and T-Mobile.
Over the years, John has collaborated with other design firms in the Seattle Area, including: Methodologie, Hornall Anderson Design Works, Phinney Bischoff, Turnstyle, and WongDoody. He has been a guest lecturer at the University of Washington. In 2006, he was on the executive committee in charge of the design for the 2006 AIGA/Icograda Design Week held in Seattle.
John's work has been honored by a variety of publications and organizations, including the ACD 100 Show, Adobe Magazine, AR 100, Communication Arts, Graphis, How, ID Design Annual, ID Annual Interactive, NIRI Seattle, Print’s Design Annual, The Seattle Show, and the Type Directors Club.
Prior to forming Push Design, John was a creative director at Leonhardt:Fitch until 2003. Before moving to Seattle, John worked at MetaDesign in San Francisco.
John graduated from California College of Arts & Crafts, in San Francisco, where he received a BFA with distinction in graphic design.
For the last ten years he has lived on Bainbridge Island with his wife and three boys.
Jenny is a co-founder of Jackson Fish Market, a small software startup focused on making beautiful software experiences. Their latest product is A Story Before Bed - the first and only service that lets parents, grandparents, and children record video of themselves reading children's books and play it back as often as they like on the Mac, PC, or iPad. Before Jackson Fish, Jenny worked at Microsoft from 2001–2007 as Creative Director of the Windows User Experience team. When she isn't running her startup, she teaches and serves on the advisory board for Portfolio Center School for Design in Atlanta and works on national & local organizations to foster the next generation of creative design talent headed for the tech industry. She was named one of the Top 100 Most Influential Women in Technology by the Puget Sound Business Journal and was awarded Seattle 2.0 Best Startup Designer in 2010.
Gage Mitchell is partner & designer at Seattle-based Modern Species, a sustainable design studio specializing in organic food & beverage and personal care product brands. He currently serves as AIGA Seattle's Sustainability Director, and as an Editorial Director for the LivingPrinciples.org.
Before moving to Seattle in 2011, Gage worked at boutique design studios in Madison, WI, Charlotte, NC, and Denver, CO – where he was born and raised. He holds a BFA in Graphic Design from Colorado State University, where he started the AIGA Student Group and served as the group's first President. His AIGA obsession has followed him throughout his career as he's served on the board of each subsequent chapter.
Gage's work has been featured in design books, magazines, and popular blogs, and he's won various awards for identity, print, advertising, direct mail, packaging, wearables, and environmental design projects.
Gage's obsessions include a constant hunt for unique food and appreciating delicious craft beer. He currently lives in a tiny downtown Seattle apartment with his lovely wife and business partner, Jennifer Stewart.
Jinna Hagerty began her design career in Washington, D.C. at Auras Design, where she focused on publication and identity design. While at Auras, Jinna also played an instrumental role in the launching of [FPO], a magazine dedicated to editorial design. Following her work at Auras, Jinna served as senior designer at Influence Marketing, developing collateral for the entertainment industry. She earned her BFA in graphic design at The College of New Jersey. She also had the honor of participating in Milton Glaser's summer program at SVA.
Since moving to Seattle, Jinna's new clients and freelance projects have included work for Senator Maria Cantwell, Swedish Medical Group, and Electric Pen. When not tied to her computer, Jinna enjoys painting and making kimchi. She volunteers her time with AIGA as well as the Seattle Art Museum and YouthCare. She thinks you should volunteer too—just ask!
As partner, Joel helps provide vision and leadership guiding the solutions and designs his company, www.FuseIQ.com, provides to their clients. As Seattle AIGA Web Director Joel is leveraging his decade plus experience creating Web solutions to help AIGA Seattle evolve and progress to be a flagship website of resources, events and inspiration.
Joel has many years’ experience in all aspects of website planning, design and development and uses his broad base to help clients realize their vision and drive business into new arenas. Starting in 1996 Joel has worked for Adobe Systems, Imation, AdRelevance, Inc., Media Metrix, Xchange Applications, and several award winning companies in the start-up community designing and building web experiences. Several years ago he completed a side venture, www.projectstand.com, and recently has initiated a new think-tank to tackle broad national and international issues using web and mobile IT. Joel is also a 8 year member of Solutions For Good, an alliance of professionals whose primary interest is serving nonprofit organizations, and now has the honor of serving on the board as Web Director for AIGA Seattle. Joel regularly travels abroad expanding his understanding of the use of global information and communications technologies, and has recently help found a new nonprofit assisting rural villages in Nepal: www.BasaVillageFoundationUSA.org
Owner Tracy Strand started Blue Dot Management in 1998 to provide marketing and association management services to various nonprofit organizations and companies. Tracy has over thirteen years of marketing experience and six years of association management. As administrator for AIGA Seattle, Tracy is responsible for general administrative services, attending all events, corresponding with national AIGA, and providing bookkeeping services.
“I absolutely love my job and all the people I work with,” says Tracy. Besides her part-time job, Tracy enjoys being a mom, running, reading, and gardening.
