ADCMW | About

DCUSA Logo

Design Coalition/USA
The Art Directors Club of Metropolitan Washington, an organization of approximately 400 creatives in the Washington, DC area, has proposed the creation of a national "Design Coalition USA" (DCUSA), a coalition of existing regional Art Directors Clubs throughout the US dedicated to professionalism in design and giving businesses an informed choice by offering a resource of creative talent.

As we envision it, DCUSA will be a means to accomplish:

Recognition of designers as professionals;

A point organization for the establishment of standards in design school curriculum.

All these are areas in which we must band together to be heard. As individual ADCs, at one time or another we have all talked about doing something like this, but never taken action. Typically, ADC Boards already have a very full plate just dealing with the daily business of managing a club. This leaves very little energy left over to deal with profession-wide issues. And in a global context, individual clubs simply don't have the necessary voice to make any kind of meaningful impact on these issues.

Take these steps

Ask the board members of your local Art Directors Club to vote to affiliate with DCUSA. Only Clubs can join DCUSA, not individuals.

Appoint a Board Member to represent your ADC on the DCUSA Board.

Grant membership reciprocity. This means than any affiliated ADC agrees to grant full member benefits to any other affiliate ADC members during their membership term.

Subscribe your members to our Discussion List, an email list which enables creatives to ask questions and share information with each other instantaneously and worldwide. Each Club can submit a complete list of member email addresses and we will handle subscribing them.

Become a part of the Creative Resource Buyers' Guide. This resource, for both the creative and business communities, offers all categories of creative services from Design to Print. Move away from printed, annual, out-of-date at publication directories, to an online, dynamic, searchable, and up-to-date resource. This can be the one place all potential clients go to search for services. We all need to know about services outside our local area, and this is the way to do it. By promoting the Creative Resource to Business, we enhance the professional reputation of all ADC members.

Use the DCUSA logo and/or that of your organization on all promotional materials to strengthen awareness of our professional organizations.

Submit an awareness campaign to your local business publications to run on a pro-bono basis.

What you will get out of DCUSA

Greater recognition as a design professional by the business community.

Greater awareness of intellectual property and copyright laws by creatives and the business community.

Students who are better qualified to practice in the design profession.

Additional member benefits at no additional cost.

A resource of new ideas and information to improve your design organization.

Recent mentions
A mention of DCUSA and its efforts appeared in the Winter 1998 issue of Critique magazine. We have reprinted it here on the ADCMW website. Read it here.

At the HOW Magazine Business Conference held in Washington, DC in June 1997, over 100 graphic designers from all over the country attended our evening presentation on DCUSA—by far the largest turnout for an evening event at the conference—and our plans were greeted with much enthusiasm and interest.

Contact us
And all of this without committing a dime. We need your ideas and enthusiasm to make this happen. This is your opportunity to take simple actions to resolve long-standing issues common to the entire design profession. For more information please email Karen Dodds, DCUSA Chair, or phone 202.547.0090.

Art Director Clubs
Art Directors Club of Atlanta
Art Directors Communicators of Buffalo
Art Directors and Copywriters Club of Chicago
Art Directors Club of Connecticut/Hartford
Art Directors Club of Cincinnati
Dallas Society of Visual Communications
Art Directors Club of Denver
Art Directors Club of Houston
New Hampshire Creative Club
Art Directors Club of New Jersey
Los Angeles Creative Club
Communication Artists of New Mexico
Art Directors and Designers Association of New Orleans
New York Art Directors Club
Art Directors Club of Philadelphia
Art Directors and Artists Club located in Sacramento
San Diego Communication Arts Group
San Francisco Creative Alliance
Seattle Art Directors and Copywriters Club This site seems to be hosted by an ad agency, so most of the content is actually the agency's, but click on the link "voice your opinions" to get to the good gossip page.
Western Art Directors Club located in Palo Alto
Read Italian? Interested in what Art Directors are up to in Italy? Art Directors Club Italiano
How about German? The Art Directors Club für Deutschland e.V
How cool is this? Moscow Union of Designers/Russia
Check out our sister organizations to the north! The Society of Graphic Designers of Canada has chapters from Vancouver Island to the Atlantic.

If your organization is not listed or linked, let us know!