What is the Texas Show?

The Texas Show is the first Texas-wide design competition run by AIGA. Every chapter in the state of Texas is involved: Austin, Dallas, Houston and our newest addition, San Antonio. 2012 is a landmark year for The Texas Show: for the first time, the exhibit will go to New York City and close at AIGA's National Design Center.

This biennial design competition is comprised of a competition, awards ceremony, catalog, and traveling exhibit. The Texas Show is open to all Texas design professionals and students. You don't have to be an AIGA member to enter, you just have to live, work and/or breathe in Texas.

Why do we do it? Well, for a few reasons. Recognizing stellar design in Texas creates excitement in our industry; fresh designers get discovered which keeps established folks in the industry on their toes and inspires new talent; the competition highlights Texas designers in a way that can demonstrate value to clients and firms; and finally, having a state-wide competition builds value for AIGA membership.

Texans historically love a good fight, so what better way to show off what we've got than a good, old-fashioned, friendly competition? And the stakes are high this year with an extra chapter participating and the New York closing exhibit.

This year's Texas Show is focused on community.

In addition to recognizing and discovering designers, the purpose of this year's show is to create community, not just within our regional chapters of AIGA, and not just state-wide, but nationally as well. This is the first year The Texas Show has been invited to take the traveling exhibit to AIGA's National Design Center Gallery in New York City, so this show will have a national audience.

This year's Texas Show drew volunteers from all regions of the state working together to produce the collateral thus creating a communal, collaborative show. Designers know that working in this field means creating relationships. Relationships with clients and vendors can make or break a design project. We want to keep the grassroots tradition alive within the design community, while creating a forum to recognize work that is top notch. Stellar work makes clients happy and inspires future designers. It keeps our industry thriving.