Aspen Design Summit

The 2009 Aspen Design Summit, a partnership of AIGA and Winterhouse Institute, was held at Aspen Meadows in November 2009. Thanks to generous support from The Rockefeller Foundation and the tireless work of our attendees, the Summit was a tremendous success!

When the International Design Conference in Aspen was launched in 1949 in an obscure former silver-mining town west of Denver, Colorado, the goal was to bring designers and business leaders together to foster understanding of what design could accomplish. Foremost, design was shown to be a strategic force in improving business and cultural interests and enhancing global prosperity. More than a half-century later, the 2009 Aspen Design Summit restored a kernel of the conference's original mission by uniting designers with the primary beneficiaries of their talents and insights… - Change Observer

The Aspen Design Summit is an interdisciplinary, global workshop of designers, NGO decision makers, corporate leaders, and experts who work together to design human-centered solutions to problems that challenge the quality of life. The projects are those that benefit real people without the means to address impediments to human dignity and achievement. The projects may benefit people directly or the environment on which human activity depends.

Outcomes of the 2009 event

AIGA and the Winterhouse Institute have partnered with Change Observer to report on details and outcomes from the 2009 Aspen Design Summit:

• Aspen Design Summit: Project updates 09.25.10
• Aspen Design Summit: Initial Report
• Aspen Design Summit: Background
• Aspen Design Summit: Participants
• Aspen Design Summit Report: Hale County Rural Poverty Project
• Aspen Design Summit Report: CDC and Healthy Aging
• Aspen Design Summit Report: Sustainable Food and Childhood Obesity
• Aspen Design Summit Report: Mayo Clinic and Rural Health Care Delivery
• Aspen Design Summit Report: UNICEF and Early Childhood Development
• Aspen Design Summit Report: UNICEF Menstruation Challenge

About Aspen and IDCA

Chicago industrialist Walter Paepcke founded the International Design Conference in Aspen more than fifty years ago. He and his wife Elizabeth envisioned Aspen as a place where leaders from throughout the world could gather to share ideas. Their vision was first realized in 1949 when the