Start your day with a breakfast overview of EGD educational opportunities, then put your rethinking cap on again for a general session featuring new approaches to design courage and creativity. Join your colleagues at the SEGD Design Awards Presentation and Luncheon. In the afternoon, choose from hot-topic design tracks. Saturday night, wind down at the JFK Library & Museum and, if you still have the energy, top off the evening at Felt, a trendy Boston billiards parlor.

Are you a student, professional, or educator who wants to start an EGD educational program or create your own academic curriculum? We'll summarize program options, from short design charettes and semester-long workshops to summer programs and full-fledged minor curricula. We'll end with an interactive session on how to structure academic programs for your specific circumstances. Russ Roberts of SignTech and Mark Andreasson of Design Communications have decades of experience helping designers bring their work to fruition. They'll share their insights on successful collaboration and how fabricators can work most effectively with their design firm partners.

Partnered in life and work, Michael Donovan and Nancye Green have learned it takes courage to explore your curiosity and redefine yourself. Donovan/Green's approach to branding and information design has evolved over decades in the field. These veterans will share how they pursue their passion to engage with intelligent partners who understand the power of design.

Ryan Chin and Susanne Seitinger, PhD candidates at the dynamic and multidisciplinary MIT Media Lab, will provide insight into how the next generation approaches creativity. They'll tell us about innovative Media Lab projects that might very well affect you, such as the City Car, Smart Cities, and other initiatives taking place in this groundbreaking and influential design/research center.

Kathleen Bowden, CXO Communication, helps her clients rethink their missions, brand strategies, and identities and communicate them successfully to their target audiences. Most recently, she led CXO's rebranding work for RSA Security following its acquisition by EMC. Earlier in her career, she helped drive IBM's consumer positioning with its landmark e-business campaign and collaborated with Fast Company to create its "Fast Talk" conversation series.

With his stylized, often metaphorical title sequences for films like Se7en, Donnie Brasco, and Spider-Man 3, Kyle Cooper has forced cinema-goers—and the motion picture industry—to reconsider the humble credits. His two-minute masterpieces have been called “so good they make sitting through the film worth it.” His first firm, Imaginary Forces, became one of the hottest design shops in Hollywood. In 2003, he rethought his own craft and established Prologue Films, a smaller-scale firm focused on live action and graphic design.

See how high your peers have raised the bar this year with the unveiling of the 2007 SEGD Design Awards. Come see the best work in EGD and have lunch with the winners. Deep dive into three of this year's SEGD Design Award winning projects and see how the awards jury recognized complex problem-solving as well as beauty. Phil Engelke, vice president of ID8/RTKL and jury chair, will facilitate.
How do you reimagine cultural icons while honoring their legacy? How do you rethink materials selection and fabrication when sustainability is the key objective?

• Michael Gericke will give us the backstory on Pentagram's EGD and interiors work for the groundbreaking new home of the Arizona Cardinals.
• Julie Henson, Thinking Caps, will explain how waste from the Tempe Transportation Center's own construction site is being used to create its signage.
• Peter Dixon, Lippincott Mercer, will share how his company is working with McDonald's to reinvigorate the Golden Arches.

Museums no longer consider themselves encyclopedias with walls. Today, their primary job is to create a spark—to translate complex ideas into tangible experiences that incite learning, exploration, or other action.

• At the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, Jonathan Alger and his C&G Partners team layered “grand visual gestures” to engage visitors and inspire them to observe their universe.
• With the new Exploration Mars exhibit at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry, David Woody and his team will help visitors imagine an experience no one has ever had, and include them in the discovery process.
• At Chicago’s McCormick Tribune Freedom Center, Cybelle Jones and her Gallagher & Associates team show how interactivity and effective storytelling can bring a lofty subject matter to life.

Green up your practice, learn how to protect your most valuable asset (your intellectual capital), and open your mind to a new signage planning hierarchy.

• Naomi Pearson and Maura Mathews, Two Twelve Associates, will explore sustainable strategies by focusing on materials, finishes, construction, fabrication, recycling, and consideration of the entire life cycle of what we create.
• An intellectual property expert, Jim Astrachan, Astrachan Gunst & Thomas, P.C., will review copyright law and how your work can (and can't) be protected.
• Chris Calori will speak about her just-released book, Signage and Wayfinding Design, and describe the Signage Pyramid method she has developed during more than 25 years in EGD.

"For a thousand days in the early 1960s, America seemed new and fresh." That was the genius of John F. Kennedy, and that's the spirit evoked at the JFK Presidential Library and Museum. What better place to rethink than the museum built to celebrate Kennedy's great promise of a new and better world? We'll enjoy a light dinner and see the exhibits dedicated to JFK's legacy.

Still have energy to spare? Hop on our bus and head for an evening at Felt, located in the historic Ladder District next door to Boston's famed Opera House. Felt is four floors of dining, dancing, and billiards, with in-house pool sharks in case you need a little instruction. Rack 'em up and finish the 2007 SEGD Conference in style!

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