A lesson in relationships, referrals, and building a network.

I was invited to contribute a poster design to the 2010 AIGA Indy member party that told my “AIGA story.”

In 2004, I was noticing a trend: most of our new clients came from our existing clients. I was joking that I should start tracking where all of our client connections had come from. By the end of the year, I started an Illustrator file showing the web/map of all of our client contacts to date. Every year, or sometimes every few months, I would pop the file open and update with our new clients. After a few years, it became a very dense map, and looked slightly neurotic. But for me, this was a very visual reminder of the importance of relationships, connections, and referrals.

So when I was invited to create a poster, this lesson seemed like an obvious concept to depict. In today’s world of online social networks, my poster depicts how my real life social network came to be.

As a look ahead, here’s what the final looked like at the show, as a 24×18″ poster print:

If you’re interested in seeing the process, continue reading below.

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