The sold-out talk, AIGA/NY Members Series: Armin Vit, The Good, the Blog and the Ugly took place at the Galapagos Art Space on September 29, 2010.

Armin Vit presented his talk in three sections,

The Good: a quick 10-year overview of his career, his family and daughters, published work, new work, and a new conference

The Blog: starting and operating blogs like Speak Up, Brand New, FPO and

The Ugly: killed jobs and first jobs.

From graduating college in Mexico City in 1999, Armin Vit’s career has taken him to Atlanta, then Chicago, New York, where he worked with Michael Bierut at Pentagram, and now to Austin where he and his wife, Bryony Gomez-Palacio, work on projects from home through their company, UnderConsideration, and spend time with their two young daughters.

Realizing early on that there are many other opportunities to monetize their skills in running blogs, Armin Vit and his wife, launched several successful blogs like Speak Up, Brand New, and FPO. In addition, they published several books, the Word It Book, Women of Design, Graphic Design Referenced, and Flaunt.

Their next big undertaking was extending the popular blog, Brand New, and organizing a one-day conference around the practice of corporate and brand identity. The Brand New Conference features a various lineup of speakers including Michael Bierut, Paula Scher, Erik Spiekermann.

Next Armin Vit discussed working on the book Graphic Design Referenced, which has sold over 8,500 copies and 13,000 in foreign language editions.

The Graphic Design Referenced project was the springboard to the idea of self-publishing. The newest release is their self-published book, Flaunt, an informative book with case studies of portfolios and interviews with 18 graphic designers. The plan in the beginning was to sell the book as a PDF, but after printing 2,000 copies and selling out in 2 weeks, Flaunt has been a “fantastic project that has a life of its own,” said Armin Vit.

Finally, the last part of the talk concluded with The Bad, killed projects and Armin’s first design projects because “the firsts are always ugly.” The first paid logo was for a Mexican television show about computers in 1998 made with Adobe Dimensions and clip art. He also showed his first website, first book (which was missing the half title page), and first portfolio.

The event wrapped up with Armin Vit’s parting words of wisdom in three short lessons:

Lesson 1: There’s always someone you’ll need to woo.

Whether it’s a boss, or clients, prospects or other designers, you always have to woo and impress other people. “No matter where you are, there’s always someone you need to be aware of that needs something from you in a certain way and you have to deliver, so that you can actually succeed,” he said.

Lesson 2: What would [x] do?

Instead of reinventing everything from scratch, ask yourself, ‘what would [insert someone you admire] do?’ to see where you can take your work. In his undergraduate studies, Armin would refer to David Carson “I would ask myself what would David Carson do? I did by imitating and learned something else on my own.”

“There are people that have done something that you want to do, that you can take and do it in your own way. You should always ask yourself that question based on people that you respect.”

Lesson 3: You can never stand still.

You always have to keep going at full speed, no matter what. “If you’re a young designer, someone else is going to get that promotion that you want. If you just stand there thinking that you deserve it, you’re screwed.” Never stay still, always keep going.

For more information, visit

Under Consideration http://www.underconsideration.com/

Brand New http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/

FPO: For Print Only http://www.underconsideration.com/fpo/

Quipsologies http://www.underconsideration.com/quipsologies/

To view event details, visit

AIGA/NY Members Series: Armin Vit http://2006.aigany.org/events/details/11G1/

To view additional photos, please visit our Flickr photostream. We encourage our members to contribute their photos to the AIGA New York Flickr group.