Leading environmental graphic design professionals from North America, Europe, and beyond  will meet to share ideas, strategies, and resources during SEGD’s first-ever international symposium October 22 in London.

“Minding the Gap: Views on EGD from Both Sides of the Pond” will focus on the broad contemporary practice of environmental graphic design, the range of disciplines represented in the SEGD community, and the role of EGD in the built environment.

“The scope and impact of EGD continues to evolve and expand, and this is a perfect moment for North American and European designers to meet, exchange ideas, and focus on what lies ahead for our profession,” says David Gibson, information designer and principal of Two Twelve (New York). Gibson and Alexandra Wood, principal of Holmes Wood (London) are co-organizers of the event.

The opening session will highlight the breadth of EGD, from wayfinding to environments and exhibition design. After opening remarks by Lee Skolnick, Lee H. Skolnick Architecture + Design Partnership (New York), presentations will include David Gibson on wayfinding; Laurence Madrelle of LM Communiquer (Paris) on environments; Gary Shelley of Casson Mann (London) on exhibition design; and Jason Bruges, Jason Bruges Studio (London) on art and lighting design.

"Mirror, Mirror" at the V&A was a 2009 interactive lighting installation by Jason Bruges.

The symposium will be held at the Victoria & Albert Museum, where environmental design has helped shape the visitor experience and provide context for one of the world’s most diverse museum collections. Moira Gemmill, the V&A’s director of projects, design, and estates, will lead a panel featuring contemporary designers working for the museum, including Lucy Holmes of Holmes Wood; Agnieska Glowacka of Glowacka Rennie Architects (London); Frans Bevers of Opera Amsterdam; and Christopher Bagot of Softroom Limited.

Holmes Wood (London) have designed a broad range of communications at the V&A, from wayfinding to exhibition graphics.

A panel discussion hosted by the Sign Design Society, led by SDS President Michael Wolff, will showcase design for the 2012 Olympic Games in London.

Recent winners of the SEGD Design Awards program will highlight the day’s final session. 2010 winners including Tim Fendley of Applied Information Group (London), designers of the Legible London pedestrian wayfinding system, and Nuno Gusmão, principal associate of P-06 Atelier (Lisbon), which won awards for the Theatre and Auditorium of Poitiers, Bikeway Belém, and Museu Fundação Oriente, will present their work.

The Legible London pedestrian wayfinding program, Applied Information Group

The symposium will close with a “Looking Ahead: View from Both Sides of Pond” discussion between Pentagram partners Daniel Weil (UK) and Michael Gericke (New York).

The symposium will highlight EGD’s multidisciplinary nature and its reach into all aspects of design for the built environment, says Alexandra Wood, a member of the SEGD Board of Directors.

Bikeway Belem, P-06 Atelier

The event is open to designers, clients, developers, fabricators, technology providers, and other professionals connected with environmental graphic design or allied disciplines including architecture, graphic and interior design, information and interaction design, wayfinding, and signage design.

“SEGD offers an incredibly valuable array of educational resources to those of us practicing environmental graphic design,” says Wood. “Encouraging a formal dialogue among colleagues ‘across the Pond’ is a great first step toward sharing SEGD resources globally.”

Following the symposium, on October 23 SEGD will host a roundtable discussion with various European design organizations. For information on this event, contact ann@segd.org.

“Minding the Gap” is made possible in part by lead sponsor Principle Group.

For more information or to purchase tickets for the symposium, visit the SEGD website. –P.M.K.

Phoenix Island is a luxury resort under construction on a man-made island in the center of Sanya City, in China’s Huinan province. With landmark architecture by Beijing-based MAD Architects, the complex will include a five-star hotel and conference center, a signature seven-star hotel, domestic and international passenger terminals, a yacht clubhouse, and six boutique apartment buildings.

Scheduled for completion by 2014, the complex will also feature media facades using LEDs manufactured by Daktronics Inc. Approximately 108,000 ft. of Daktronics’ ProPixel LED stick elements will be installed on the curtain walls of the buildings. Early collaboration between Daktronics, the architect, and the developer (Sanya Phoenix Island Development of China) resulted in a curtain wall design that would accommodate the LED stick elements, avoiding a patched-on look.

Daktronics says the video-capable LED system will provide 100% digital, 15-bit video processing and can display more than a billion colors. Daktronics’ Keyframe creative group will create content for the grand opening and will build a creative content foundation for the client. — P.M.K.

Photo: Michael Jungblut, Berlin

Today outside of Geneva, Switzerland, CERN opened a new permanent exhibit at the visitor center in the Globe of Science and Innovation. The Universe of Particles exhibit provides “an immersive interactive journey into the heart of matter.” The exhibit seeks to explain the complex subject of contemporary physics currently being explored by the CERN via the LHC (Large Hadron Collider - the world’s largest and highest-energy particle accelerator).

Photo: Michael Jungblut

The interactive exhibition, designed by ATELIER BRÜCKNER, “plunges the visitor into the fascinating world of particles, from the infinitesimally large to the infinitesimally small, from the Big Bang to the present day. The bewildering environment is designed to force visitors to abandon conventional ideas and contemplate a field of research beyond their common experience.”

Photo: Michael Jungblut

In the Globe of Science and Innovation, visitors are given an understanding of the complex science behind the research being conducted at CERN. Below the 27 metre high dome, spherical kiosks and display cases combine to give a content rich narrative. The exhibit provides a wealth of information and opportunities for interaction. The highlight of this free-flow exhibition covering 450 square meters is a dynamic spatial experience that has been staged with multimedia using film, sound and light choreography.

The exhibit is sponsored by Rolex SA. – S.N.

Photo: Michael Jungblut

Photo: Michael Jungblut

‘YEKPARE’

(monolithic) from nerdworking on Vimeo.

As part of its “Write the Future” campaign, Nike has taken over Johannesburg’s Southern Life Center building for an interactive LED light show. “Write the Headline” allows fans around the world to root for their favorite World Cup player in a big way. The installation, almost the size of half a football pitch, displays submissions from Facebook, Twitter (#writethefuture), QQ (a Chinese chat program), and Mxit (a South African IM app) that read from distances as far as 2.5 kilometers away. Users vote on the player they think will ‘write the future.’ Personal messages are then projected on the city’s fourth largest building. It’s in examples like this that we see how far Twitter and Facebook have come in the past few years.

The screen consists over 6,000 Daktronics ProPixel sticks. In total, the display is 40m wide x 44m high. The top 6m of the display is populated with higher density vertically mounted sticks (152 columns). The bottom 38m is populated with lower density vertically mounted sticks (55 columns). (via Daktronics) — S.N.

The application of augmented reality, says Bill Collins, who covered SEGD’s Changing Design, Designing Change conference last week in Washington, D.C. Collins comments on how three young designers who spoke at last Thursday’s “Tommorow is Here” panel are pioneering the transition from traditional architecture to a responsive built environment embedded with augmented reality experiences. Read Collins’ full article for Digital Signage Today here. — P.M.K.

Nokia Ovi Maps – Interactive Projection Mapping from seeper on Vimeo.