AdvancedDesign (AD) is a community where designers can share, educate, learn, and connect. It is a place that supports students and professionals alike, from high schoolers to tenured designers with decades of experience. Through our Initiatives, AD explores a diverse range of topics including making, media, culture, and mental health, free of charge. With our headquarters in Chicago, AD additionally operates in San Francisco.Advanced Design was founded by Hector Silva in 2016. As a young educator and designer himself, Hector quickly saw many opportunities for improving education. There was a disconnect between the way design was taught in school and what was demanded of industry, however, against the behemoth of traditional academia, there is little power at the individual level. So, he took matters into his own hands, and Hector built a small team to begin to work to fill those gaps through practical hands-on workshops bringing together students and professionals. Fast forward five years, and AD has become a mainstay of design education—offering content that highlights excellence in industry, building diversity in the field, connecting designers through events and workshops, and through its most ambitious task to date, creating our own design school. Today, AD has over 30 members, advisors, and instructors across the US, Canada, and France, and continues to build its community base globally.