DC: Designing Change

February 26, 2010 at 3:52 pm
Filed under Conferences, SEGD Conf + Expo, Uncategorized

SEGD Conference + Expo | June 2-5, 2010 | Washington DC

The world is changing fast. And as technologies, economies, and our physical landscape undergo constant metamorphosis, designers have to keep up.

How is the design world adapting to all this rapid change? How can we harness the incredible energy afoot and create positive change for our clients, our colleagues and employees, our families, and ourselves? That’s the Big Question at the 2010 SEGD Conference + Expo, and one that will be tackled by the likes of designer/provocateur Stefan Sagmeister, Project H founder Emily Pilloton, interactive lighting designer Jason Bruges, architect Phil Freelon, and many others in Washington, D.C., June 2-5.

The complete conference website was launched today. Check out the star-studded speaker list, fascinating project tours, and great networking opportunities. And get yourself registered to attend. Come be a part of the change. — P.M.K.

Signing the National Mall

February 19, 2010 at 10:49 am
Filed under Conferences, SEGD Conf + Expo, Urban Planning, Wayfinding

More than 25 million people visit Washington D.C.’s National Mall and Memorial Parks each year, and on any given day, more than 60 languages are spoken on the mall. It’s a special place, with a dramatic story to tell about America and what it means to be an American.

But many visitors don’t know the Washington Monument from the U.S. Capitol, never mind how to find the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. For them, the two-mile stretch of the National Mall can be a complex, confusing place to be. Help is on the way, though, in the form of a new wayfinding and signage system designed to guide visitors to major destinations, identify monuments, explain park rules, and reduce sign clutter. In late 2007, the National Park Service chose Hunt Design to develop the signage system and, this spring, the first of about 300 new signs will be installed.

The new program is featured in the latest issue of segdDESIGN magazine and will also be a tour spot during the 2010 SEGD Conference + Expo June 2-5 in Washington, D.C. We’ll see you there. –P.M.K.

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Sign09 Vienna

December 8, 2009 at 9:12 am
Filed under Conferences, Wayfinding

A nine-day conference on signage and wayfinding is underway in Vienna this week, with sessions focusing on city wayfinding, airport and transportation signage, landmarking, typography, and information design.

Sponsored by the Vienna-based International Institute of Information Design and the British Sign Design Society, it has so far featured speakers such as David Gibson (on his new book The Wayfinding Handbook), Cliff Selbert (on landmarking in wayfinding), Tim Fendley (on the Legible London pedestrian signage system), and Stefan Eggers (on a new European Union typeface for transportation signage).

For more information, visit the Sign09 website and tune in to Sander Baumann’s DesignWorkPlan. –P.M.K.

Design Summit: setting priorities

December 7, 2009 at 11:55 am
Filed under Conferences, Design education

Introducing design creativity and innovation curriculum into K-12 education was the top-priority design policy proposal emerging from last week’s U.S. National Design Policy Initiative summit in Washington.

The proposal to incorporate design modules into elementary through high school curriculum garnered 23% of the 324 votes solicited by the Design Policy Initiative prior to its Dec. 1 summit. The next step toward developing a K-12 design policy will be teaming up with organizations that have already established similar initiatives, including the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum and the Association of Architecture Organizations’ A+DEN (Architecture + Design Education Network), which includes AIA, AAF, and the Chicago Architectural Foundation.

The Design Policy Initiative’s second policy priority is preparing and publishing case studies that demonstrate the positive social, economic, and environmental impacts of design. At the summit, SEGD CEO Leslie Gallery Dilworth shared the work done by SEGD and SEGD member firms for Hablamos Juntos, a Robert Wood Johnson-funded research study focused on the use of symbols in health care settings. Case studies like these will be published in print, on the web, and in multimedia formats to demonstrate the value of design.

The third-priority design policy as presented at the summit is to establish design roundtables with the design industry, government agencies, and stakeholders. Ideally, the roundtables will take place at already-scheduled events such as design conferences, and will focus on four areas: 1) health and wellness care, 2) sustainable living, 3) innovation and entrepreneurship, and 4) education for the 21st century.

The summit gathered design association leaders, design educators, and government agency representatives who use design services. In addition to those present at the meeting, more than 200 people participated via a live feed. A full report of the summit can be found at the Design Policy initiative website, and an upcoming issue of  SEGD’s member newsletter, Messages, will also contain a full report. — P.M.K.

Reaching the Design Summit

December 1, 2009 at 8:30 am
Filed under Conferences, Design Process, Design education

The U.S. National Design Policy Initiative—the movement that advocates for a governmental plan of action to support design’s role in economic competitiveness and democratic governance—is meeting in Washington, D.C., today, and you’re invited.  

You can watch and interact with the Summit live from 9:30am-3:3pm EST viawww.ustream.tv/channel/us-design-policy. The social stream will be connected to the group’s Facebook page, Twitter account @usdesignpolicy, and YouTube page, http://www.youtube.com/user/USDesignPolicy.

During breaks in the Summit, participants will answer your comments and questions on the social stream about what you have seen and heard at the People’s Q&A, moderated by Change Observer’s Brad McKee. 

SEGD is a co-sponsor of the Summit, and has been involved in the initiative since its inception. SEGD CEO Leslie Gallery Dilworth is attending today and SEGD is co-sponsoring the design policy Q&A session.  

The Summit will gather design association leaders,  government agency representatives, and design educators to push the group’s design policy proposals forward. By being a voice for the U.S. design community, the Design Policy Initiative seeks to:

 ”….design promotions to boost the demand for American goods and services

“…create innovative policies to protect American intellectual property and support the People’s entrepreneurial spirit

“…design standards to guarantee inclusion, sustainability, safety, and quality in the experiences of the human remade world

“…facilitate policy designed to address design’s role in making American democratic values tangible to the People.”

Design policy proposals include formalizing an American Design Council to work with the U.S. government; setting federal guidelines for legibility, safety, and accessibility in all government communications; establishing an assistant secretary for design in the federal government; and expanding national grants to support interdisciplinary community design assistance based on human-centered design practices. –P.M.K.

What does Collaboration look like?

November 13, 2009 at 8:57 am
Filed under Conferences, Dynamic Environments, Uncategorized

That’s Collaboration with a capital “C,” the focus of SEGD’s Dynamic Environments 3 workshop finishing up today in New York City. Yesterday at the dramatically renovated Museum of Arts and Design, 2 Columbus Circle (by Allied Works Architecture), the team responsible for the museum’s dynamic wayfinding and interpretive system shared the challenges (and opportunities) created when you team architects, designers, museum clients, and technology consultants on a groundbreaking project.

Pentagram principal Lisa Strausfeld and lead designer Chrisian Marc Schmidt outlined the design principles and process that led to a system of dynamic wayfinding totems and iPhone-inspired interpretive displays (see the feature story in segdDESIGN No. 25). Brian MacFarland, MAD’s associate vp of education, said the collaboration “was probably the most difficult aspect of the project from the end user’s perspective. It was very difficult for us to understand the various roles and expertise of the technical companies involved.”

“If we had it to do over again, I would want to know –at the front end — how the collaboration process would work and who the specialists are involved with the project,” he added. “We often felt we were dealing with a foreign language when it came to the technology stuff. And everyone was on different schedules with different agenda and different needs. Knowing how collaboration works and who the players are is helpful in getting everyone rowing in the same direction.”

Workshop attendees also heard about collaboration from the perspective of fabricators and technology consultants. “With technology playing such a huge role in projects now, collaboration between designers and technology firms has to happen much earlier in the process,” said Eli Kuslansky of Unified Field. Kuslansky and designer Lee Skolnick, Lee H. Skolnick Architecture + Design, will tour workshop attendees around the new Sony Wonder Technology Lab in Manhattan today.

In a new, dynamic format, the workshop was held at various venues in New York City, starting at MAD on Thursday morning and moving to the Hard Rock Cafe, then on to Touch nightclub, where Christie Digital announced the launch of Christie MicroTile, an LED-lit rear-projection product designed for high ambient light environments.  Today, the workshop moves from the Sony Wonder Technology Lab to the new Official NYC Information Center, a Times Square tour with primary workshop sponsor Daktronics, and other Manhattan venues. — P.M.K.

World Architecture Festival

November 9, 2009 at 1:15 pm
Filed under Architecture, Conferences, Design competition, Festivals and Conferences

Aussie SEGDster Jack Bryce suggests having a look at the award winners from the World Architecture Festival.  With entries like the Mapungubwe Interpretation Centre (South Africa), pictured below, it’s sure to be worth the trip. — A.M.

Postcards from Beijing: Part 6

November 4, 2009 at 4:14 pm
Filed under Conferences, Urban Planning, Wayfinding

Information designer, author, and lecturer David Gibson attended last week’s Icograda World Design Congress 2009 in Beijing, just in time for news that his book The Wayfinding Handbook will be published in China, Taiwan, and Korea next year.

Drawing on decades of work with his firm Two Twelve, Gibson (a member and past two-term president of SEGD) outlined his strategies for “finding the hidden logic” in complex public spaces. He designed The Wayfinding Handbook as a manual for students, teachers, professionals, and clients. It’s fast becoming an EGD canon. — P.M.K.

Postcards from Beijing, Part 5

November 3, 2009 at 5:19 pm
Filed under Conferences

Six days in Beijing, and my experience of this huge city is still mostly contained to a 2.5-mile strip between our hotel — headquarters of the Icograda World Design Congress 2009 — and two Olympic landmarks, the National Stadium (better known as the Bird Cage) and the National Aquatics Center (the Water Cube).

Each morning, I’ve continued the 5:45 a.m. run that’s ritual and religion at home. Here, replacing the hills of my Cincinnati neighborhood is a flat stretch of tree-lined concrete and asphalt. I head north up the unpromisingly named Gulou Outer Road, past an impossible number of high-rise apartment and office buildings. They remind me of an astonishing fact I heard yesterday in an Icograda session: that Beijing’s building mass is equal to that of the entire European continent.

Beijing is home to almost 20 million people. While they are mostly quiet at this time of day, the streets are alive with industry: Beijingers biking to work, sweeping the streets with hand-made brooms, walking their small dogs, or sending their children off to school.

I pass the first of two parks along my journey. Parallel to the Gulou Road, it’s a perfect Chinese postcard: trees gracefully arching over stoned-lined paths alongside a canal, spanned occasionally by pretty arched bridges. Walkers and the occasional runner take their morning exercise. 

But the highlight of my run is the second park along my route. It will have to remain nameless, because I can’t read the tiny type on my map. Nothing more, really, than a concrete ribbon in the middle of the six-lane road, it’s alive with activity as the sun begins peeking over the horizon.

By the time I pass, a pair of huge Chinese lantern sculptures that stand sentinel in the park are already turned off for the day. A group of old men busily ready their kites or already have them in the air, chatting as they work and staring impolitely at the crazy American lady they’ve seen pass every day for almost a week. Another old man practices Tai Chi, sword whipping smartly in the air as he moves. A couple plays badminton, giggling and admonishing each other as the shuttlecock flies. And young guards in their ill-fitting military-style uniforms, trying hard not to return my smile of greeting, wave me away from the gates of the Olympic venues. It’s time to turn back toward the hotel.

It’s a tiny piece of a huge, unsolvable puzzle, my Beijing run. But it’s the piece I’ve come to know in some small way these last few days. It’s what I’ll remember most.  – P.M.K.

Postcards from Beijing: Part 4

October 29, 2009 at 11:33 am
Filed under Conferences, Green Related

In its General Assembly conducted October 24 and 25, the Icograda board of directors pledged to take a leadership position in encouraging the world’s communication designers to promote sustainability in their work and act as environmental stewards.

“I don’t think we’ve ever been so clear about our power as designers in this world,” said David Berman, Icograda treasurer and author of Do Good Design, a 2009 manifesto on ethics in design. Icograda formally adopted the AIGA’s Living Principles for Design, a framework for sustainable design practices that calls for “quadruple bottom line” outcomes supporting environmental responsibility, social equity, economic health, and cultural vitality. The Living Principles outline purposeful steps toward achieving the interconnected outcomes.

“We know that design can be a powerful agent of change,” continued Berman. “Our commitment here today means that we expect our members to embrace sustainable design not just when it’s convenient or when our clients will let us get away with it, but all the time.” The board of directors pledged to create a formal policy by October 2010.  

Alt, who calls the Living Principles “a valuable vision statement for design communications,”  told Icograda attendees that information and experience design can be used to profoundly affect behavior. He shared projects ranging from HP Labs’ ceNSE project, which uses nanotechnology to monitor the health of the planet, to the world’s first carbon-neutral city, being built in Masdar City, United Arab Emirates. 

Alt said designers’ early ideas about sustainability focused on materials and manufacturing processes, “but now we’re taking a step back and asking what it means to be a designer, and what role we have not only in environmental stewardship, but in issues like poverty and social equity.

” The key questions emerging from the sustainability movement now are “How do we design for the developing world, the so-called ‘dollar-a-day’ populations” and for those in the First World, “How do we make our own lifestyles, which have become the aspiration of others around the world, more sustainable?”

Alt also urged designers to consider the consequences of technology tools. He cited the work (above) of Chris Jordan, who photographs the detritus of mass consumption, including the photo above that shows scrapped cell phones. Alt says 400,000 cell phones are retired every day. In the U.S., those phones are often “shredded” stateside, then shipped in huge pallets to China, where some materials (including hazardous components) are reclaimed, made into new products, and shipped back to the U.S. “When we put stuff out in the world, we need to design for the beginning of life, use, and the end of life,” Alt urged.

Alt was joined on the speaker’s podium by other sustainable design leaders including Brian Dougherty, founder and creative director of Celery Design Collaborative and author of the book Green Graphic Design, and Sophie Thomas, co-founder of the London-based design firm thomas.matthews and  Greengaged, the not-for-profit entity that works to encourage designers to tackle key environmental issues. “Visual communicators have a unique opportunity to define a different way of living,” said Thomas. — P.M.K.