Baton Rouge: the Next Great City of Design
Baton Rouge, my home city and an entity that associate much of my personal identity with, is defined by many things: strong historical roots, deep culture, fantastic food, good people, championship sports, and hot women. However, young and inspiring graphic designers in the area want to add one more thing to this definition: design.
If you think of great cities of design, you’ll probably conjure up facades from New York or San Francisco, or if you’re thinking digitally, even Austin. These are the great champions of design in America because they’ve been the epicenter of revolution in the design-related industries. And they’ve become this way because they were open to change, shrugging off any impeding constrictions and letting the inspiration flow.
But for many decades, Baton Rouge just hasn’t been that city of change, of innovation to become an epicenter of any movement, even localized. To imagine our city as a vessel of creativity and a place recognized for its quarry of talent was just a dream. A dream that under the direction of Mayor-President Kip Holden is finally seeing the light of day.
Downtown—the heart of our city—is new and improved after millions have been poured into, and so much changed has occurred in a short eight years that it’s awe-inspiring to think of where we’ll be in another eight. Our city is the home to great art shows and fantastic celebrations, is beautiful, and even the source of inspiration for other cities to affect their own transformation.
It seems that finally—finally—we have the necessary prerequisites to become such a city of design. And now LSU is pumping out fantastic designers in astounding rates, and the local design studios in Baton Rouge are becoming so successful that they’re attracting awesome designers to the area at a rapid pace, so we might actually be poised to make it.
But, is it going to happen?
Last week, a cavalcade of local designers showed up at Chelsea’s Café just beneath the overpass to discuss the future of Baton Rouge as the next great city of design. The Baton Rouge Design Alliance’s inaugural meeting was by all means a success, with lots of young talent all huddled in a back corner of the restaurant for some good food and good networking.
Amongst the bevy of discussed topics, the transformation of Baton Rouge into the next great city of design was certainly one of them, and many members of the congregation expressed strong feelings that in the next few years, Baton Rouge could become the home of the next generation of design. “Baton Rouge has the capacity to become a city with great design on every corner and we’re here to make a connection with other designers and artists to give us all of the outlets to succeed,” said BRDA co-founder, Blake Cason.
With such talent, passion, and youth working on this, who knows what’s ahead for Baton Rouge?
(Here’s a hint: it’s going to happen.)
To find out more about the BRDA, you can connect them via Twitter.