SEGD

Just in time for Valentine's Day, an interactive LED sculpture by Danish architecture firm BIG is making hearts beat faster on Times Square.

(Our hearts are beating faster because we'll be in New York June 7-9 for the 2012 SEGD Conference!)

The SEGD Board of Directors welcomes seven new members whose terms begin in January 2012. Amy Lukas, principal of Infinite Scale (Salt Lake City) and a board member since 2007, is the new board president, succeeding Wayne McCutcheon, principal of Entro Communications (Toronto).

Research consultant Ellen Taylor has been named SEGD's Director of Academic Development & Research, a new position focused on strengthening SEGD partnerships with higher education and fostering EGD-related research.

The new issue of segdDESIGN features a look into the minds and visions of Michael Arad and Frederic Schwartz, architects of the National September 11 Memorial at the World Trade Center and the New Jersey 9/11 Memorial just across the Hudson River.

For the digital edition, click here.

(11.21.2011) Have a client or collaborator who needs an intro course in EGD? Need a good presentation to show a local design or civic group what SEGD is about? Or a relatively quick way to tell your mother what it is exactly that you do all day? Check out our new Intro to SEGD presentation here.

(11.14.2011) Salt Lake Design Week kicked off today, with environmental graphics and SEGD a big part of the week's events. Daily workshops at The Leonardo, Salt Lake City's new Sci+Tech+Art museum, will combine with fun events like tonight's Pixels of Fury design competition. Wednesday night, Nov. 16, SEGD Fellow Richard Poulin will be guest speaker at the first SEGD event ever in SLC.

(11.10.2011)  How do you make scent visible? What does smell sound like? Sephora and fragrance maker Firmenich asked The Department of the 4th Dimension to transform the emotional alchemy of scent into a physical experience. The Sensorium is a pop-up "scent museum" near Sephora's new New York flagship.

New York Law School has been training lawyers since 1891. Its new 235,000-sq.-ft. academic building in lower Manhattan-part of a $190 million campus renovation--features a series of exhibitions that puts its legacy front and center. Environmental graphics by Poulin + Morris infuse the building with the school's history and honor distinguished alumni and faculty.

ACRP Report 52, Wayfinding and Signage Guidelines for Airport Terminals and Landside, researched and written by SEGD member firm Gresham, Smith and Partners (Nashville), has been published.

(9.20.2011) -- SEGD will introduce itself in Amsterdam, Berlin, Lisbon, and London during the 2011 SEGD European Tour October 12-19. Following our successful Minding the Gap symposium in London last year, the tour is designed to expand SEGD's international community, increase awareness of SEGD, create alliances with European design organizations, and promote cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural exchange.

Queens Library's new Children's Discovery Center is as much museum as it is library, with interactive science, math, and technology exhibits leading the way to fun learning. When kids walk on the gigantic motion-activated floor map designed by Lee H. Skolnick Architecture + Design Partnership, sound effects pinpoint borough hotspots: a jet takeoff at JFK International Airport, the crack of a baseball bat and roaring crowd at Citifield, and trains on the Long Island Railroad.

Much has been said of the gushing inverted fountains on the exact footprints of the World Trade Center towers in lower Manhattan. Meanwhile, across the Hudson River, the twin stainless steel walls of the New Jersey 9/11 Memorial quietly honor the 744 New Jersey victims who lost their lives.

Some rare American signage icons will have a new home soon thanks to an anonymous $900,000 donation to the American Sign Museum in Cincinnati. The museum will move to its long-anticipated permanent home in early 2012.

In remote and mountainous northern Syria, more than 700 tiny towns and villages are home to the world's most impressive examples of Byzantine architecture. A new 87-mile circuit of hiking trails connects the Forgotten Cities and makes them more accessible to tourists and locals. 

The striped façade of 221 London, a recently refurbished office building in Canberra, Australia, is a distinct new feature in the city’s Central Business District. For developer Molonglo, Frost Design referenced the building design in a bold EGD program that employs a custom font and a supersized building address that seems to weave in and out of the stripes like a ribbon. 

At Rome’s new National Museum of XXI Century Arts, Zaha Hadid asks visitors to ponder the relationships between art and architecture, museum and contents. ma:design interpreted Hadid’s vision in ground-breaking environmental graphics that encourage visitors to explore MAXXI’s wandering ramps and sinuous curves.

Set on one of the prettiest pieces of real estate in Manhattan, The Rockefeller University is among the most respected research institutions in the world. Reflecting that research focus, Calori & Vanden-Eynden / Design Consultants created a signage and wayfinding program with arched forms informed by the soft curve of chromosome pairs.

By Louis M. Brill

Using landmark spaces as digital canvas, projection mapping is trompe l'oeil on a gigantic, pulsating scale. Where will it take us next?

By Pat Matson Knapp

Our Timelines article in segdDESIGN No. 24 set us off on some fascinating explorations of the fourth dimension and how it can be represented graphically and spatially in museum and corporate exhibition environments.

The best 3D timelines, we concluded, are brief, visually compelling, deploy physical space and media dramatically, and whet viewers' appetites for the content to come. The trick, we're told, is to resist the cliched "line on the wall."