Moving on up…

March 10, 2010 at 10:56 am
Filed under Branding, Dynamic Environments, Signage, Wayfinding

© Albert Vecerka/Esto

Time moves fast in the newsrooms and offices of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, and the media conglomerate’s new headquarters in midtown Manhattan needed to keep up the pace. Two years after it purchased Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal, News Corp. moved out of its World Financial Center headquarters and into new midtown Manhattan offices at 1211 Avenue of the Americas.  Studios Architecture designed the 300,000-sq.-ft. space on five floors to consolidate News Corp.’s online, print, and wire services groups and integrate the latest technology.

Design360 Inc. developed a comprehensive wayfinding and signage system featuring digital media walls, signage, and branded graphics for the public spaces. The challenge, says Design360 Creative Director Jill Ayers, was to “maintain a consistent brand feeling across several types of components, from signage and static displays to digital media.”

To help create a dynamic communications-driven environment, the main corridor on each floor functions as a central gathering point, with links to cafes, socializing areas, and circulation. To unite the floors and serve as a dynamic, content-driven backdrop to the main staircase, two multi-story walls of 20mm LED panels feature ongoing direct feeds from the company’s website, stock ticker in Times Square, imagery from The Wall Street Journal magazine, weather, and current headlines.

© Albert Vecerka/Esto

Other digital elements in the space include graphic templates for digital time clocks and layouts for the editorial group’s Newswires Wall.

Jeffrey Kilmer

The system typeface, Helvetica Neue, was inspired by the Dow Jones logo. Materials and fabrication processes juxtapose references to traditional printing processes with nods to technology.  All workstation, room, and base building signage uses Richlite, a sustainable paper product, and ADA zinc panels emulate inked-magnesium printing plates. Dye-sublimated archival photography from the newsroom’s early days serve as glass screens in the central coffee bar areas. Directional signage and illuminated identification at the main reception areas were produced from custom blued steel with push-through acrylic letters. And as a break from the buzz of the newsroom, the project team collaborated on quiet hallways that showcase Pulitzers and other distinguished awards given to The Wall Street Journal and artwork from each of Barron’s weekly covers.  –P.M.K.

© Albert Vecerka/Esto

Slate on the Exit Wars

March 9, 2010 at 9:55 am
Filed under Signage, Wayfinding

U.S. exit sign...

In the United States, exits are marked with bold red letters spelling out the word E-X-I-T. But in much of the rest of the world, exit signs are dramatically different. Most countries have adopted a version of the ISO’s Yukio Ota-designed “running man” exit sign, which its proponents claim is more effective because a) it’s a pictorgram that doesn’t require reading and b) it’s green (for go, Go, GO!).

Read more in “The Big Red Word vs. the Little Green Man,” by Slate Deputy Editor Julia Turner. –P.M.K.

...vs. the rest of the world

Monochrome map

March 4, 2010 at 10:23 am
Filed under Maps, Wayfinding

“Brooklyn based designers David Heasty and Stefanie Weigler (of Triboro Design) have produced a new New York City subway map printed in a single color: Fluorescent red, of course. As Heasty notes, ‘The new design strips away the familiar color-coding of the subway system routes while still maintaining a level of hierarchy and functionality.’” — A.M.

“The Secret Language of Signs”

March 2, 2010 at 12:12 pm
Filed under Signage, Wayfinding

Amtrak concourse, Penn Station (Slate)

Like it or not, signs seem to be one of the things in life that people don’t notice unless they’re bad. In a series launched this week, Slate calls signage “the most useful thing you pay no attention to,” and delves deep into the reasons why good signage and wayfinding design are so important in today’s complex built environment.

Slate Deputy Editor Julia Turner writes about the advent of SEGD and interviewed SEGD CEO Leslie Gallery Dilworth and Director of Education Craig Berger extensively for the series. Dilworth makes a cameo appearance in the series introduction.  “Lost in Penn Station” features interviews with David Gibson and Lance Wyman. And next up in the series: a sneak peek at the Legible London sign program.  –P.M.K.

Map this

March 2, 2010 at 10:08 am
Filed under Maps, Wayfinding

Like many of us, Italian industrial designer Emanuele Pizzolorusso thinks requiring a harried tourist to carefully crease and fold an awkward city map “the right way” is too much to ask. So he’s come up with a no-fuss alternative: the Crumpled City Map. Printed on Dupont™ Tyvek® and designed to cram into a small bag, it’s virtually indestructible, highly portable, and waterproof. –P.M.K.

Braille in decline

February 27, 2010 at 10:38 am
Filed under Accessibility, Graphic Design, Regulatory information, Social Issues, Symbols, Wayfinding

“A report released last year by the National Federation of the Blind, an advocacy group with 50,000 members, said that less than 10 percent of the 1.3 million legally blind Americans read Braille. Whereas roughly half of all blind children learned Braille in the 1950s, today that number is as low as 1 in 10, according to the report…Braille literacy has been waning for some time, even among the most intellectually capable, and the report has inspired a fervent movement to change the way blind people read.” — A.M.

Find your way in a flash

February 25, 2010 at 4:59 pm
Filed under Maps, Technology, Wayfinding

“The TamTam Flash concept GPS torch is both a familiar looking and new technology in a number of ways. It resembles an ordinary flashlight and its name sounds an awful lot like TomTom, which neatly links to the fact that the concept torch is actually a GPS mapping device that gives its user the option of either a street map view or a turn by turn guided navigation projected onto a surface.” — A.M.

“Along the way” with David Vanden-Eynden

February 24, 2010 at 3:27 pm
Filed under Design Firms, Design education, Wayfinding

SEGD Fellow David Vanden-Eynden shared his unique brand of pragmatism and humor with students at the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning yesterday.

Lesson One, aimed at an audience of graphic, interior, industrial, and digital design students—some with little exposure to environmental graphic design—was how wayfinding and signage, placemaking and branding can contribute to the built environment and improve the quality of life. In a world made more complex every day, “Wayfinding is about clear communications and a universal language that makes the world easier to understand.”

For One Raffles Quay, a 2 million-sq.-ft. office tower complex in Singapore, CV&E created a sculptural entry statement featuring 3-ft.-tall cast-glass letters. (Photo: Tim Nolan)

Sharing insights from 30+ years as a designer and principal (with Chris Calori) of New York-based Calori & Vanden-Eynden/Design Consultants, Vanden-Eynden shared the firm’s work and some good advice, including:

1. Starting is only half of the design process; finishing is the other half.

2. Don’t fall in love with your first idea.

3. Ideas are the one resource of which you have an endless supply.

4. Simple is the best, but it’s really hard.

5. Doubts are OK, but don’t let them get in your way and don’t back down.

6. Have passion.

7. Don’t quit.

8. Just because you can put type in the shape of a fish doesn’t mean you should.

9. If you aren’t having fun, why bother?

10. And the secret to success, according to Vanden-Eynden? “Work harder than everyone else.”– P.M.K.

Simple is better: With a "ridiculously low" budget at Royal Executive Park, CV&E had to leverage every last scrap of material. To sign a six-building complex, they cut the building numbers out of stainless steel and rotated them 90 degrees in the voids. (Photo: James R. Morse)

Kinder caring

February 24, 2010 at 8:40 am
Filed under Healthcare, Signage, Wayfinding

Amsterdam’s Emma Children’s Hospital is undergoing a major renovation to improve services and facilities for its young patients, from infants to adolescents. OPERA Amsterdam is tasked with interiors for the spaces, and the first newly renovated unit, Infants Care and Staff, opened last month.

Working with design architects OD205, OPERA conceived three layers of space representing different levels of intimacy: the most private area, around the patients; the immediate surroundings; and the space representing the patients’ relation to the outside world. The “parade,” or main corridor through the unit, is key to the design, acting like a high street in a small town. A bright but sophisticated color scheme leads patients and visitors to their destinations, with clear wayfinding signage on wall-mounted signs and on the floors. Commissioned work by international artists adds texture and whimsy and helps avoid an institutional feeling. –P.M.K.

Photos: Mike Bink

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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