AZ BRANDCAST Kathy Morgan and Mike Marinello with AIGA Arizona
Kathy and Mike from Phoenix Design Week talked about design pet peeves and Arizona’s design identity and culture.
Formed in 1989, the AIGA Arizona chapter serves the creative professional community within our state, and augments the activities of the national AIGA organization. Our four-tiered mission is to bring programming to the community that helps to: – improve design ability – connect complementary disciplines – encourage social impact, and – promote community excellence AIGA Arizona programming includes our premier annual event, Phoenix Design Week which includes a 2-day conference, plus ongoing monthly events and exhibitions throughout the year, such as our Collide Meetup, Creatathon, a 24-hour pro bono marketing marathon, Adobe software training, student and professional portfolio reviews, networking mixers, hands-on workshops, and speaker opportunities with local and national creative experts. 
We’re especially proud of our contributions to the Design for Good program which uses design thinking to accelerate and amplify social change. Our chapter continues to increase its influence and demographic reach every year, with especially strong representation in metropolitan Phoenix, a vibrant core in Tucson, a growing presence in Flagstaff, as well as other communities throughout Arizona. Our student membership – the lifeblood of our organization – is growing and highly engaged, providing a continuum of representation from emerging designers through the most seasoned professionals.
Kathy Morgan is co-founder and creative director of Morgan and Company, a Phoenix graphic design firm established in 1982. The firm handles brand management, print collateral, instructional materials, annual reports, direct mail and environmental design primarily for clients in the telecommunications, credit union, arts, legal and government arenas.
Kathy also serves as treasurer of AIGA Arizona, the professional association for design, co-director of Phoenix Design Week 2019 and as marketing/communications chair on the board of Arizona Photography Alliance.
Kathy’s “have passport, will travel” motto has landed her at various ports in Europe and Latin America in the past few years, not to mention jetting off to the Seattle area whenever it’s a dry heat in Phoenix. Alternately described by her own children as both a goofball and too serious, Kathy is a grammar and languages fanatic, golfs once a year on Christmas and has recently started writing a series of short memoirs.
Mike Marinello is the director of Phoenix Design Week, a week-long celebration of design organized by AIGA Arizona to unite our state’s creative professional community and provide a forum for sharing best practices, showcasing exceptional work, and gaining both personal and professional inspiration.
Mike has over twenty years of design experience working in marketing, advertising, and education. He has worked on simple solutions for single clients as well as complex projects involving web, print, and radio campaigns spanning diverse markets and including multiple stakeholders and their brands.
As a lifelong learner and wanderer at heart, Mike enjoys exploring and is not afraid to ask dumb questions. Mike likes to design, make, break, rinse, and repeat.
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ABOUT AZ BRANDCAST
Branding isn’t just for companies. In fact, Arizona is its own brand. Every month, Mike Jones and Chris Stadler tap into Arizona’s rich community of thought leaders and business owners to find out how the state is developing that brand. Join them as they interview business and thought leaders from in and around Arizona about higher purpose in their companies and Arizona’s development as a brand. AZ Brandcast is powered by Conscious Capitalism AZ and Resound Creative.
ABOUT YOUR HOSTS
It’s Mike Jones‘ mission to see brands grow and succeed – to reach their full potential. He believes every brand, like every person, has DNA that’s remarkable, but not every brand knows how to act like it (and communicate it to the world). It’s not about what’s trendy, whatever consumers are demanding, or whatever will turn the fastest profit. It’s about the long game – building real relationships with your customers and your community.
Chris Stadler likes to see great plans executed. In a world looking for magic formulas, his stoic outlook tends to point people back to doing the basics really well. Accountability and measurement are his tools. In the past, Chris served as the staff copywriter for a large credit union, UX/human factors researcher at the University of Iowa and full-time teaching faculty, teaching design, copy and strategy at the University of Oregon.
