As we mentioned last week, Bryan and Tomas spent a good portion of their Saturday over at the Corcoran College of Art + Design taking part in 2012 AIGA DC Portfolio Review. Like we always say, giving back to up-and-coming designers is important and so on and so forth. You’ve heard us talk about this before, so we won’t harp on it.

The AIGA DC board and the Corcoran apparently know us too well, because the first thing they did when we arrived was to seat Bryan (a.k.a. “the hungriest riple“) next to a bowl of Jelly Bellys. Or maybe it was just a coincidence. Probably not.

We had a great time eating jelly beans, meeting students, checking out what they’d been working on and offering pointers as they look ahead to graduation. Overall we were extremely impressed with both the work and enthusiasm of the students. Of course there was the occasional moment where a student’s eyes would go dead with design-fatigue as we suggested some improvements to a big project they’d been slaving over for months (”I thought I was finished with this!”), but we’re happy to say that pretty much everyone seemed eager to tweak their work to perfection.

Another heartening development is that every year it seems like students are more and more knowledgeable about web design. It’s been a blind spot in design programs for years, mostly due to the relative infancy of the Internet, but it’s great to see it turning around. We’re pretty sure it’s single-handedly due to Ian going around to schools telling students, “If you’re not learning web design you’re making a huge mistake,” which was exactly what he told everyone at AU last week.

After a morning full of reviews, Tomas led a break-out session in the auditorium where he chatted with students about the common pitfalls for job applicants, and how to make you and your work stand out to employers. He promised we’d put a link up to our little “how to create a kick-ass portfolio” worksheet, so here it is! After he finished speaking, Tomas stuck around and took some questions from the crowd and stayed even later to take additional questions one-on-one. Bryan, meanwhile, may or may not have finished the Jelly Bellys (we have no proof one way or the other).

In addition to meeting a bunch of students, we also had the chance to mingle with a bunch of talented DC designers who were also there to participate in the review. Tomas and Bryan both met Gavin from Polygraph, one of the minds behind the oh-so-pretty AIGA 50 poster. In case you haven’t seen it, they have a great video of the poster being printed up on Vimeo. We highly recommend checking it out… doubly so if you’re a print lover.

Thanks for a great event Corcoran / AIGA DC! We look forward to next year’s review.