AIGA New York and FLORA Partner to Prepare Working Designers using generative design tools

A new partnership pairs the country’s oldest professional design association with an AI-first creative platform to deliver hands-on training in AI-assisted design workflows for working designers.

NEW YORK CITY — October 2 — AIGA New York and FLORA today announced a partnership to help working designers build real fluency with AI in their creative practice. The program opens with a six-part series of virtual labs running from October 13 through November 17, free to AIGA members and the wider public.

The partnership responds to a shift already underway in studios and in-house teams: Generative design has moved from novelty to a daily tool faster than most designers have been given the time or the training to absorb it. Rather than treat that as a threat to craft, AIGA New York and FLORA are treating it as an education question that is best answered by putting practitioners in front of the tools, with real projects, expert guidance, and room to experiment.

Two organizations, one question
AIGA New York is the largest chapter of AIGA, the country’s oldest and largest professional association for design. For more than a century, AIGA has advanced design as a professional craft, a strategic tool, and a cultural force; the New York chapter serves thousands of designers across studios, agencies, in-house teams, and independent practice, through programming, mentorship, and a community that spans every stage of a design career.

FLORA is an AI-native creative platform built for professional creatives. Its signature canvas brings text, image, video, and 3D models into a single node-based workspace, so designers can build and reuse their own workflows instead of starting over in a chat window each time. FLORA is already used by designers, art directors, and creative teams at Pentagram, Lionsgate, Netflix, Nike and others to move from concept to finished work, with every creative decision remaining in human hands.

Both organizations arrived at the same question from different directions: what does a working designer actually need to know to stay effective as this AI matures?

Why AIGA NY and FLORA
The partnership rests on a shared conviction: the future of creative work should be shaped by creatives, not handed to them as a directive. Both AIGA NY and FLORA believe AI belongs in the hands of people trained to use it with intent, and that craft, precision, and judgment are what make the output worth anything. Importantly, both believe that access to new tools should be broad rather than reserved for the few teams with the budget to experiment.

This idea points to upskilling as the practical work. AIGA New York brings the community, the professional standards, and a century of experience in developing professional designers. FLORA brings the cutting edge platform and the expert instructors already using it every day in their creative practice. Together they will offer structured, hands-on instruction in AI-assisted design, taught publicly, for designers looking to prepare for and help shape the future of creative work.

“AIGA New York has been actively discussing the use of generative design tools for years, from studios to in-house teams navigating how they fit into their process. Our partnership with FLORA brings us to the forefront of the decisions our community is already making, rather than catching up to them after the fact.” Stacey Panousopoulos, Executive Director, AIGA New York

What’s ahead

AIGA NY × FLORA Labs — six sessions, October 13 to November 17

Following the kickoff, the partnership runs a six-part series of two-hour, virtual labs, fully open to the public. Each session is hands-on and built around a working designer’s problem, led by a FLORA product expert with a curriculum shaped to the needs of working designers. Participants get free access to the FLORA platform for the duration of the program.

Topics will include:

• Canvas Workflows for Logo Design and Expressive Typography
• Canvas Workflows for Custom Mockups
• Canvas Workflows for Video and Motion Design
• Canvas Workflows for Exploring Creative and Art Direction
• Canvas Workflows for Building Custom Tools
• MCP Workflows for Codifying Brand Guidelines

The series moves deliberately from craft to systems: early Labs focus on the work designers produce daily, later ones on building the custom tools and codified brand systems that let a practice scale. Designers leave with workflows they own and can carry into client work.

Registration details for the Lab series can be found here.