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.

Sure, we know that all work and no play makes us…well, boring and uninspired. Tapping our inner child can jumpstart curiosity, creativity, and learning. So why aren’t more museums and cultural institutions leveraging the use of play in their exhibition environments?

George Bixby

That was the question posed by George Bixby — a graduate student in interaction design at Parsons The New School for Design — at SEGD’s Exhibition and Environment Design Symposium last week at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. Bixby led attendees through an exercise designed to show how exhibition design professionals can tap play as a means to engage visitors and facilitate interaction with content and each other.

At SEGD's Exhibition and Environment Design Symposium, attendees worked in groups to create simple games that inspired interaction.

SEGD’s 7th annual Exhibition and Environment Design Symposium focused on Innovation, including technology applications such as iPhone apps, RFID wayfinding, and sophisticated projection and lighting systems. But technology wasn’t the only topic.

“At Parsons,” says Bixby, “We talk as much about when NOT to use technology as when to use it.” Good old-fashioned play, he notes, is a powerful tool for driving interaction in a socially mobile context such as museums.

Remember how to play? SEGD symposium attendees were reminded of how tapping their inner child can jumpstart curiosity and creativity.

Bixby divided attendees into small groups, then gave each group a random simple tool, such as chalk or string. Next he asked them to pick a location or object nearby that had inherent meaning (such as architectural, historical, or cultural significance) and gave them 30 minutes to design a game to drive interaction with the environment and other players.

One team wove a web that connected them and an "artifact," an empty bottle.

The results were fascinating – and just plain fun. Games ranged from a simple hopscotch-like interaction with stone steps across a pond to a Blind Man’s Bluff variation that had blindfolded volunteers following an intricate path of string to find an apple “prize.” Another group wove an intricate string web/costume that connected the players, who chanted and balanced a water bottle on a makeshift platform in the middle. Other games included a variation of musical chairs and a maze made from string and ending with an “artwork” that maze followers could contribute to.

Another game, inspired by Blind Man's Bluff, asked blindfolded volunteers to follow a tracery of string until they found the "prize," an apple.

In his presentation about art-inspired exhibition design, Jonathan Alger of C&G Partners also touched on the impact of play in exhibition environments. He cited artist Hans Hammert’s 2007 “German Panther,” a Panzer tank made of colorful balloons that visitors were invited to pop. “It’s the ultimate in participatory design.”

Hans Hammert's 2007 "German Panther," before audience participation

“Play is a behavior deeply rooted in our human behavior,” says Bixby. “But despite significant research in the field of play, its nature is still very mysterious and understanding how we can use it to drive an interaction is a great challenge for designers.”

For more information on the exhibition design symposium and other SEGD educational events, see the Learning bar on the SEGD website. — P.M.K.

Hammert's work, after audience participation

Art history PhDs Steve Zucker and Beth Harris were frustrated with the expensive art history textbooks their students tended to ignore. In 2005, they stood in front of a painting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and recorded an irreverent conversation about its merits and history. They started a blog featuring podcast guides for artworks in the Met and the Museum of Modern Art. And they discovered that the same students who wouldn’t crack the heavy textbook loved the engaging clips. Soon they were embedding the files in online survey courses and later developed a multi-media web book.

Today, SmARThistory.org gets close to 40,000 visits per month. It won a 2009 Webby Award and PC Magazine named it one of the top 100 websites of the year.  Zucker — a keynote speaker last week at the 2010 SEGD Exhibition Design Symposium — says demand for what he calls “informal learning tools” is increasing. In addition to revolutionizing the traditional textbook, he sees huge potential for art museums and other cultural institutions to use web-based multi-media tools to collaborate, share access to their collections, and promote their value. And he sees fascinating opportunities to expand the museum experience beyond bricks and mortar.

Steven Zucker

“Art can be very intimidating to a lot of people, particularly in the formal art museum environment,” Zucker notes. “Mostly I want to spark conversation about art, break down barriers, and get rid of the hushed tones of the art museum. If we can use tools like this to engage people in art objects and history, that only enhances the museum experience.”

SEGD’s “New Directions in Exhibition Design” symposium is an annual event held at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Mich. This year’s symposium theme was Innovation. For more information on the event, see the SEGD website. – P.M.K.

Jan Lorenc, long-time SEGD member and principal of Lorenc Yoo Design (Atlanta) is one of the most well-traveled human beings we’ve ever met. The co-author of What is Exhibition Design? may also have seen more museums than anyone on the planet. His latest adventures included the Freyderyk Chopin Museum in Warsaw. See his blog postcard here. –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

This year’s project is the development of an exhibition and wayfinding program to support healthy activities and nutrition for students at a magnet school in the University Circle section of Cleveland. Students first toured the area and interviewed the students before being given an overview of the EGD design development process by Don Bilodeau of Pentagram.  Students were then given a primer on mapping and analysis during concept development by Joel Katz of Katz Design and Craig Berger of SEGD.  Later in the process students will develop and document their designs with the assistance of George Lim and Jon Mischke of Jacobs and Gary Stemler of Nordquist.

The summer workshop also highlights how collaboration works in environmental graphic design and fabrication using a current university project as an example: The memorial and interpretive park developed for the 40th anniversary of the May 4, 1970 National Guard shootings at the university. The project, instigated by SEGD board member David Middleton brought in Gallagher Associates to develop the design of the interpretive park and former alumni and current SEGD board member Gary Stemler of Nordquist to fabricate and install the interpretive panels. David Middleton also developed the print map  and timeline of the event. Currently plans are in the works to develop a visitors orientation center designed by Gallagher Associates. — C.B.

Students created exhibition booths to showcase their work. Reviewers circulated among the exhibits, heard one-on-one presentations from the students, and provided constructive feedback and advise.

At a closing reception, keynote speaker James Damian, senior vice president of Best Buy’s experience development group, talked about his mentor, Gene Moore.

James Damian, Best Buy

Generations of design students (not to mention shoppers) have been motivated and inspired by Moore, the long-time Tiffany designer and man behind the little blue box and famous storefront window displays. Moore’s philosophy was to find a higher purpose in everything you do as a designer and use design to create a social conversation. It was a fitting pep talk for the FIT students about to enter the “real world” of design. –C.B.

The Museum of London has figured out a way to break through the museum walls and make the entire city its exhibition space. A new app developed by the Museum, with the creative agency Brothers and Sisters, brings the museum to the streets via iPhone screens.

First, it calculates your position in the city, then opens a map showing your position and the location of various sites where you can view historic images.

Touch a tag and a window opens, showing an historic image of the London Bridge over a frozen Thames, or scenes from Carnaby Street during the Swinging Sixties.

Tap the screen for information, or zoom in and out to view it better.

Streetmuseum’s best trick? If  you’re actually in the location, click on the 3D button and the app will overlay the historic image over the current site view through the phone’s camera. It’s like digital time travel. –P.M.K.

Images: Creative Review