eg 15 digital

NO. 15, 2015

ACT’S LADY CILENTO THE NEW SECOND ACT CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL COOPER HEWITT

THANK YOU VERY MUCH

Society for Experiential Graphic Design A multidisciplinary community creating experiences that connect people to place

SEGD BOARD OF DIRECTORS President Vice President Treasurer

Jill Ayers, Airspace, New York John Lutz, Selbert Perkins Design, Chicago Patrick Angelel, CREO Industrial Arts, Everett, Wash.

Steve Bayer, Daktronics, Brookings, S.D. Jody Graff (Ex Officio), Drexel University, Philadelphia Cynthia Hall, fd2s, Austin J. Graham Hanson, Graham Hanson Design, New York Alan Jacobson, ex;it, Philadelphia George Lim, Tangram Design, Denver (Ex Officio) Amy Lukas (Past President), Infinite Scale, Salt Lake City Bryan Meszaros, OpenEye, South Amboy, N.J. Stephen Minning, BrandCulture Communications, Sydney Steven Stamper, fd2s, Austin Gary Stemler, archetype, Minneapolis Julie Vogel, Kate Keating Associates, San Francisco

SEGD CHAPTER CHAIRS Atlanta Austin Boston Brisbane, Australia Charlotte, NC Marriott Envoy Hotel-Boston, MA Historic maps and white bands were printed in custom opacity on 1/2” low-iron sliding glass bathroom doors and shower enclosures to balance privacy and light.

Chicago Cincinnati Dallas Denver

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New York

Philadelphia

It takes more than the latest equipment to turn a sheet of glass into a work of architectural art. At GGI, we enjoy pushing the capabilities of our machines, we love taking on unique projects, and we are proud to work with architects and designers who are dedicated, as we are, to enhancing the built environment. Visit us at NeoCon East, Booth #1162!

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2 — eg magazine

Lynne Bernhardt, lbdesign@bellsouth.net Stephen Carlin, stevecarlin@coopercarry.com Steve Dubberly, sdubberly@srssa.com Jason Helton, jhelton@snallc.com Mitch Leathers, mleathers@snallc.com Michele Phelan, michele@96pt.com Sam Pease, spease@spdeast.com Jack Bryce, jack@jackbryce.com Despina Macris, despina@dotdash.com.au Kelley Deal, kelley.deal@littleonline.com Kevin Kern, kkern@505design.com Scott Muller, SMuller@trademarkvisual.com Julie Maggos, j.maggos@interiorarchitects.com Hannah Anderson, handerson@msaarch.com Margaret Lange, MLange@bhdp.com Pamela Abeyta, pamela@valiantdesigners.com Austin Frith, afrith@dfwairport.com George Lim, george@tangramdesignllc.com Angela Serravo, angela@tangramdesignllc.com Jim DeRoin, jimd@boydsignsystems.com Lucy Richards, lr@studiolr.com Simon Borg, simon.borg@populous.com Kris Helmick, kris@huntdesign.com Mohamed Khalfan, mo@signsandservicesco.com Gretta Fry, gretta.fry@spye.co Adam Halverson, adamh@serigraphicssign.com Jese Yungner, yungner@visualcomm.com Rachel Einsidler, einsidler.r@design360inc.com Anthony Ferrara, anthony@designconcernus.com Anna Sharp, asharp@twotwelve.com Stephen Bashore, sbashore@cloudgehshan.com Ian Goldberg, igoldberg@cloudgehshan.com Kathy Fry, kathy@mayerreed.com Mike Hawks, mhawks@mayerreed.com Chris McCampbell, chris@kathydavisassociates.com Brian Dyches, brian@thedigitalexperiencelab.com Ellen Bean Spurlock, ellen@media-objectives.com Lee Ater, later@arscentia.com Tim Huey, tim_huey@gensler.com Danielle Lindsay, danielle.lindsay@som.com Annelle Stotz, a.stotz@interiorarchitects.com Wu Duan, wuduan@tongji.edu.cn Cynthia Damar-Schnobb, cynthia@entro.com Andrew Kuzyk, andrew@entro.com Daniela Pilossof, daniela.pilossof@gmail.com Jeffrey Wotowiec, jwotowiec@cannondesign.com Nick Kapica, n.kapica@massey.ac.nz

Publisher Clive Roux, CEO Editor-in-Chief Pat Matson pat@segd.org

New Beginnings

Executive Editor Ann Makowski Founding Editor Leslie Gallery Dilworth Design Wayne-William Creative Executive and Editorial Offices 1900 L St., NW Suite 710 Washington, D.C. 20036 202.638.5555 www.segd.org Advertising Sales Kristin Bennani kristin@segd.org 202.713.0413 Kathleen Turner kathleen@segd.org 703.657.9171 Editorial, Subscriptions, Reprints, Back Issues 202.638.5555 segd@segd.org eg magazine is the international journal of SEGD, the Society for Experiential Graphic Design. Opinions expressed editorially and by contributors are not necessarily those of SEGD. Advertisements appearing in eg magazine do not constitute or imply endorsement by SEGD or eg magazine.

Material in this magazine is copyrighted.

Photocopying for academic purposes is permissible, with appropriate credit. eg magazine is published four times a year

by SEGD Services Corp. Periodical postage paid at York, Penn., USA, and additional mailing offices.

Subscriptions: US $80/year, International $125/year. Send US funds to eg magazine, SEGD, 1900 L St., NW, Suite 710, Washington, DC 20036.

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Postmaster: Send address changes to eg magazine, 1900 L St., NW, Suite 710, Washington, DC 20036. © 2015 eg magazine SSN: 1551-4595

With this issue, we begin a new era for SEGD and for eg magazine.

In 2003, SEGD pulled off a major feat for a small nonprofit association, launching its own design magazine. It was a risky and courageous move by SEGD’s board of directors, who followed their hearts and the vision of then-CEO Leslie Gallery Dilworth. They knew the SEGD community was hungry for acknowledgement, inspiration, and exposure to the larger world of design and business. segdDESIGN was an instant hit with our community and in 2012, a pro bono redesign by Holmes Wood amped up the visual appeal and restyled segdDESIGN as eg magazine.

A dozen years after the first issue of segdDESIGN, and many awards later, the magazine will take on a new life in 2016.

In March 2015 the SEGD board agreed to reallocate resources from eg magazine to the SEGD website, reducing the magazine’s frequency from quarterly to an annual awards edition in 2016 to boost the presence of the SEGD Global Design Awards. Since the relaunch of the SEGD website in 2013, we have seen that in terms of providing value to our members— which is SEGD’s mission and reason for being—our digital platform is much more powerful, efficient, and cost-effective than providing content via a print publication.

Just one example of this power is the reach of www.segd.org, which has more than tripled since its relaunch in 2013. This year, page reads will exceed 3 million from more than 360,000 visits, with an amazing 220,000 new visitors. Content we have produced in eg magazine, for example, when published on our website, is read by thousands more people than the much smaller circulation of the print magazine.

Reducing the magazine frequency will allow us to leverage our content development capacity and 75% of our print costs toward improving our digital presence.

The good news is that we will still be publishing the great content you’ve come to expect from eg magazine. Look for weekly and daily features, educational articles, and inspirational, boundary-breaking work on the pages of segd.org. Each week, we’ll push out a sampling of the great content to you via our e-newsletter SEGD Weekly. You’ll find valuable content when you click on the links. When you dive into the Xplore Experiential Graphic Design index, you’ll find even more content, categorized by practice areas and industry verticals. Check out our most popular area of the website, the SEGD Global Design Awards archives, for the best of EGD/XGD. Look for our new SEGD Talks video content as well—vital for communicating experiences.

The magazine has been a labor of love and is well regarded by the members. Now, we believe segd.org is our best tool for spreading education and awareness of Experiential Graphic Design—and for promoting the value that YOU bring to a much larger audience.

NO. 15, 2015

ACT’S SECOND ACT

LADY CILENTO

CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL

THE NEW

COOPER HEWITT

THANK YOU VERY MUCH

On the cover: Nothing says thank you like….THANK YOU. American Contemporary Theater at The Strand, San Francisco.

See stories, pages 22 and 48.

We’ll see you on the pages of www.segd.org!

Pat Matson Editor in Chief

Clive Roux CEO

eg magazine — 3

CONTENTS

1 UP FRONT (10)

Found A charter school makes its mark in Queens, fireflies light up Montreal, and a new mixed-use center is adding to downtown Manhattan’s renaissance.

(14)

Review Vince Frost’s Design Your Life (16)

Out There New signage systems are transparent, floating, perforated, and flexible.

4 — eg magazine

2 FEATURES (22)

Act Two San Francisco’s venerable American Conservatory Theater stages a strong second act, helping to revitalize a neighborhood and a storied movie house in the process.

3 INSPIRATION

(28)

Building the Brand, Texas Style

(48)

Thank You Very Much

Populous creates a jaw-dropping recruiting experience for one of college football’s most successful programs.

Donor recognition programs say it eloquently, and forever.

(34)

Sketchbook

Living Tree At Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital in Brisbane, Dotdash plants a bold and vibrant wayfinding system.

(40)

Design Museum, Redesigned With the stroke of a super-powered digital pen, the Cooper Hewitt reinvents itself and the very way that visitors experience a museum.

(58)

Andrea Fineman on her art of sketching (60)

Workspace RTKL’s Dallas office measures up with a “tools-of-the-trade” theme.

(63)

2016 SEGD Events Calendar A year of education, inspiration, and connection

eg magazine — 5

Thanks to our supporters 2015 Industry Partners

2015 Friends of SEGD Gallagher & Associates fd2s Foreseer University of Cincinnati

2015 SEGD Program Sponsors

NanoLumens ®

Ad Light Group

PCL Graphics

AkzoNobel

Planar

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Dr. Graphx

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Serigraphics

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Henry Incorporated

Signage Foundation, Inc.

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Neiman & Company Nimlok Northwestern University School of Professional Studies Nova Sign Group Omnivex OpenEye Global

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(10)

Found A charter school makes its mark in Queens, fireflies light up Montreal, and a new mixed-use center is adding to downtown Manhattan’s renaissance.

(14)

Review Vince Frost’s Design Your Life (16)

Out There New signage systems are transparent, floating, perforated, and flexible.

FOUND 10 — eg magazine

SUMMER MAGIC

Nothing says “summer” like the flash and twinkle of fireflies calling to one another in the darkness. In Montreal, the magic was recreated in a poetic interactive experience at the Montreal Insectarium as part of UNESCO’s 2015 Year of Light.

The exhibit resulted from two local artists’ fascination with the frail beauty of fireflies and their flashing dialogues. Using metal rods and standard light bulbs filled with tonic water, Mathieu Le Sourd and Etienne Paquette handcrafted a field of 2,500 bioluminescent “plants” that shine in the dark with the help of black light.

Three lasers, blended and connected to a network router, were used to cover the field, and a Touch Designer tool controlled each beam with a leap motion.

When visitors placed their hands on top of two interactive stations, IR sensors allowed their fingers to become light beams—dancers in the flashing, generative performance. (Photos: Adrien Williams)

KIPP NYC College Prep, a charter high school in the South Bronx, empowers students with the academic knowledge, real-world skills, and character they need to succeed. A Pentagram team led by Michael Bierut created an A+ graphics program for the school that challenges students with puzzles, games, and riddles integrated into the learning environment.

Students see the first puzzle as soon as they enter the school: the school name rendered in a colorful super-graphic composed of positive and negative space that plays with perception. Below the mural, a “sawtooth” wall welcomes students with one of KIPP NYC’s motivational phrases, “Go. Graduate.” Puzzles and games are everywhere: secret codes on the library’s glass wall, a KIPP emblem on the gym floor that reveals itself as a maze, and secret messages in a bathroom that can only be read correctly in a mirror. Skippy, the school’s bulldog mascot, is also hidden somewhere—but Pentagram’s not telling where. (Fabrication: DJM Architectural Signage. Photos: Rob Bennett)

DNUOF

BACK TO SCHOOL

eg magazine — 11

FOUND 12 — eg magazine

NEW YORK RISING

DNUOF

Post 9/11, downtown Manhattan has experienced a symbolic and literal resurrection, including a redeveloped World Trade Center site, the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, and a new subway station. In late 2014, another major milestone was completed: reinvention of the mighty World Financial Center—the Cesar Pelli-designed complex built in the 1980s across from the World Trade Center—as a $250 million office, retail, arts, and dining destination called Brookfield Place.

In concert with Pelli Clarke Pelli’s renovation, Gensler developed wayfinding and helped conceptualize an integrated branding strategy for the 8 million-sq.-ft. complex. The challenge: transform a notoriously difficult-to-navigate site into a premium lifestyle destination for people working and living downtown.

Gensler’s solution blends wayfinding and branding.

Static signage—internally illuminated monoliths of translucent resin and blackened stainless steel—is integrated with interactive digital displays that echo the branding and provide customized content. Local Projects refined Gensler’s concierge-like digital platform with smart technology that provides visitors with digital messaging about events and sales, based on their preferences and time of day.

The strategy has been successful. A year after its opening, Brookfield Place is attracting tenants like Conde Nast and people are flocking to shop, have lunch at Hudson Eats, or enjoy arts programming.

(Fabrication: Eventscape, Design Communications Ltd. and King Architectural Metals. Photos: ©Chris Leonard)

eg magazine — 13

REVIEW

Design Your Life Vince Frost

Penguin Lantern, 2015

Vince Frost had been a designer for 25 years, built a successful global practice, and earned numerous accolades before he realized that design could actually help solve the ultimate problem: improving his personal life.

The founder and creative director of The Frost* Collective based in Sydney, he leads multi-disciplinary design teams focused on branding, digital design, and environmental graphics.

His new book Design Your Life is part typographic self-help guide, part essay collection on his life and work and efforts to keep the two in balance. He spent some time with eg magazine recently to talk about what inspired the book and how he ultimately approached it as a design challenge.

“Design thinking” is such a buzzword these days.

You’ve gone a step further, even, by applying design thinking to your personal life. When was the “a-ha” moment when you realized that there is a parallel between the two?

The a-ha moment for me came when I couldn’t think of any more options and stopped relying on other “experts” to solve my problems. I tackled my life problems as if they were client briefs and it started to work.

What inspired you to write a book about it?

I did a talk at the Apple store here in Sydney in 2011, and it was titled “Design Your Life.”

I’ve done many talks and I got tired of talking purely

14 — eg magazine

about the design work and so I focused on my life and work as one. Julie Gibbs, the editor of Penguin Lantern, was in the audience and came back to me a couple years later and said that she would like to do a book on Design Your Life and I said yes.

You must have had a visual goal for the book as well as a narrative one. What was that visual/design goal?

The funny thing is when someone tells me I can do whatever I want I get very anxious. I need to have parameters. This comes from spending my career helping people solve their problems.

When there isn’t a problem or in this case a self brief, I struggle with it because it can be anything but needs to be something, if that makes any sense.

One way for getting around this issue was for me to approach DYL not as a book but as a brand. I started designing a logo rather than a cover, and affirmation cards and posters followed. I got excited about what this brand could become and the book being the launch vehicle for introducing this new brand into the market.

I wanted the book to appeal not just to designers but to the general public. I made it the same size as an iPad and my favorite Moleskin notebooks. I tried hundreds of covers and spreads before I established the look and feel.

In fact the very first cover I sketched out in the very first few minutes of starting the project became the final cover.

I wanted the affirmations to

become spreads that were easy to engage with— memorable mini posters.

I love playing with words and typography and finding an idea without adding additional imagery.

Reduction is my goal—how do I get the message across in the most efficient way.

And what about the content goals...did you envision this as part design manual, part Zen guide to life? (or something else?)

My ultimate goal is how can I help people improve the quality of their lives. If the principles by which I live my life work for me then perhaps they can work for others. We are all trying to find our way through life; it’s not easy.

People seem to relate well to what I’ve covered and I tried to make it really simple and practical. I need to read it again to keep me on track.

Eating the right food and getting regular exercise and sleep sounds basic but it does make all the difference to your wellbeing.

What did you learn from the experience of writing the book?

That it is very hard. I have designed well over 50 books so far but, it’s the first book I wrote and designed. Plus it’s highly personal content.

While writing and designing this book I questioned my ability, but my partner Miya was highly supportive so I persevered and pushed through. It’s amazing what you can do when you have an immovable deadline.

love playing with “ Iwords and typography and finding an idea without adding additional imagery.

Reduction is my goal— how do I get the message across in the most efficient way.

”

eg magazine — 15

OUT THERE

A

B

C

D

INNOVATIVE MATERIALS, PRODUCTS & TECHNOLOGY

16 — eg magazine

New product to share? Contact pat@segd.org.

D

B

A

ALTO PERFORATED

C

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IMG’s intent was to provide a system with simple geometry and refined details that enhance high-end interior design.

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The perforation makes it much less affected by wind loads, and a decorative powder-coating process creates dramatic colors.

Applications include signs and panels, murals, permanent banners, and public art.

APCO’s new sign system won Best of NeoCon GOLD 2015. Its frameless design creates an appearance of floating, and offers 100% updatability. Components are securely engaged within a precisely engineered, concealed aluminum chassis. Because of its frameless design, Elevate is ideal for showcasing direct-print technologies such as full-bleed graphics.

Glass Expressions™ is a new signage option that provides a contemporary look and sleek lines. The line is completely customizable, as the glass is sandblasted and can be waterjet-cut to any desired shape. The ADA-compliant signage is created from a single piece of glass with integrated domed Braille dots that will not fall out.

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IMAGO

eg magazine — 17

18 — eg magazine

eg magazine — 19

FEATURES (22)

Act Two San Francisco’s venerable American Conservatory Theater stages a strong second act, helping to revitalize a neighborhood and a storied movie house in the process.

(28)

Building the Brand, Texas Style Populous creates a jaw-dropping recruiting experience for one of college football’s most successful programs.

(34)

Living Tree At Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital in Brisbane, Dotdash plants a bold and vibrant wayfinding system.

(40)

Design Museum, Redesigned With the stroke of a super-powered digital pen, the Cooper Hewitt reinvents itself and the very way that visitors experience a museum.

San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater opened a new second venue in The Strand, a landmark movie house in the resurgent Central Market district.

A 500-sq.-ft. perforated LED display dominates the lobby, referencing the theater’s cinematic history and allowing the community a transparent view of what’s going on inside. Live performances, announcements, and video art share the display space.

ACT TWO

San Francisco’s venerable American Conservatory Theater stages a strong second act, helping to revitalize a neighborhood and a storied movie house in the process. By Pat Matson

22 — eg magazine

T

he American Conservatory Theater has been a fixture of San Francisco’s arts scene for nearly 50 years. When it decided to open a second venue in the city’s resurgent Central Market neighborhood, it chose a once-glamorous but long-derelict movie house for a new kind of community space.

Skidmore Owings & Merrill LLP helped A.C.T. open the curtain on a new era for the theater, the neighborhood, and the historic Strand.

Located on Market Street between 7th and 8th streets, the new performance venue, education center, and neighborhood gathering space is a highly

visible symbol of change in a neighborhood that’s recovering from decades of disinvestment. Artistic Director Carey Perloff says A.C.T. saw the location as a way to offer a new kind of theater to the city.

“We wanted it to be warm and friendly and open and fun. The Geary [A.C.T.’s primary venue] is magnificent and gilded and, for some people, intimidating. It’s the perfect 19th century playhouse. We wanted to complement it with a funky, 21st century neighborhood space that would be a bridge between theater and the community, that would allow a kind of intimacy that’s different from the grandeur of the Geary.”

eg magazine — 23

Pulling back the curtain

The redefined space houses an intimate 285-seat proscenium theater, educational facilities, a threestory public lobby including café and gathering space, and a 120-seat black-box theater and rehearsal space. SOM’s architectural team, led by design director Michael Duncan, inserted the new program within the shell of the former movie house, overlaying essential modern theater elements on top of the raw backdrop of the original building. His vision was to “pull back the curtain” on theater and create a transparent, highly visible gathering space.

The theater’s café and lobby are open to the public, even when there is no performance.

The scope of the project was broad-reaching and complex, involving adaptive reuse, historic preservation and restoration, and structural retrofit as well as development of a sub-branded graphic identity for the theater.

Duncan wanted to celebrate The Strand’s history and transform it from eyesore to a dynamic home for live theater. Purpose-built in 1917 as a silent movie house, it operated almost continuously, in various forms and with different owners, until 2003, when police raided it and closed the then-

Pink neon-lit channel letters were salvaged from a 1959 marquee and integrated into the design of the lobby café.

24 — eg magazine

porn movie theater. Like other buildings in the neighborhood, it was left to squatters and decay for more than a decade. By the time A.C.T. purchased the property in 2012, the city of San Francisco had an aggressive neighborhood revitalization plan in place.

The new modern venue retains ghosts of the past. On the façade, cast stone relief ornamentation and metal cornices were cleaned and patched.

Inside, some of the original plaster walls, pilasters, and ceiling molding was retained. Pink neon-lit channel letters from the cinema’s 1959 marquee were salvaged and hang in the lobby café.

A brand for the Strand

Onto the new, freshly modern canvas that SOM created, the firm’s Graphics and Branding Studio studio was tasked with creating and applying a new identity for the Strand—one clearly identifiable as A.C.T., but tailored to reflect the new space and its mission.

Focused on new work, emerging artists, arts education, and community outreach, the Strand’s identity had to convey the unadorned immediacy of experimental theater and reflect the gritty, transitional aspects of its surrounding

neighborhood. The design team was inspired by the stencil—a staple of backstage labeling for theatrical sets and equipment—as a way to express the direct, stripped-down simplicity of the Strand’s space and program.

“This was a project that required graphics to take a stand and continue the dialogue started by the architecture,” says Lonny Israel, associate director and lead designer for the graphics team.

The team modified A.C.T.’s existing logo with its distinctive half-moon punctuation to a stenciled wordmark, applying the motif throughout the space, from exterior signage to interior elements such as a dramatic donor recognition wall in the lobby.

“Unfussiness” was the team’s driving focus for the signage and graphics. “It couldn’t be more straightforward,” says Israel. Lettering is painted directly on walls or cut into metal sheets to resemble industrial stencil sets.

The artful donor recognition installation is a focal point for the lobby, but true to Israel’s mantra, understated. A simple but dramatic “thank you” is surrounded by a flexible grid of aluminum strips

AMERICAN CONSERVATORY THEATER AT THE STRAND Client American Conservatory Theater

with donor names rendered in vinyl. (See cover and related story, page 48.) Signage and environmental graphics were fabricated and installed by Thomas Swan Sign Company.

A dramatic 500-sq.-ft. LED display in the lobby ensures that what’s happening in the theater is visible to the community. Referencing the Strand’s cinematic history, it serves as an audience engagement tool and a venue for locally produced video art. Composed of 126 separate LED tiles, it is the first permanent interior installation of this technology, which is manufactured by Luxmax for touring concerts and other temporary events.

The perforated screen allows a sense of transparency in the space while dynamic content is a living testament to the theater’s work.

“It is really quite extraordinary,” says Perloff.

“It’s very flexible and easy to program so it changes with whatever we have going on. It looks like a part of the architecture but it’s this beautiful aesthetic curtain. So you can be in the café using Wi-Fi or on the street outside and the curtain is always lifted on what’s happening here.”

A new blade sign complements the cleaned and restored facade and recalls the theater’s heyday.

Location San Francisco Open Date May 2015 Project Area 20,000 sq. ft.

Architecture, Structural Engineering, Environmental Graphics, and Interior Architecture Skidmore Owings & Merrill LLP (SOM) Michael Duncan (design director) Graphics and Branding Team Lonny Israel (lead designer); Brad Thomas, Dan Maxfield, Pauline Cheng (designers); Nick Gerstner (project manager) Collaborators Plant Construction Company LLP (general contractor), Equity Community Builders LLC, (construction manager), Page & Turnbull Inc. (historic certification/preservation), The Shalleck Collaborative Inc. (theater consultant), PritchardPeck Lighting (lighting consultant), Charles M. Salter Associates Inc. (acoustics, security, telecomm consultant), WSP | Parsons Brinckerhoff (MEP design), Anderson Rowe & Buckley Inc. (mechanical design/build engineers), Rick Unvarsky Consulting Services Inc. (LEED consultant) Signage Fabrication Thomas Swan Sign Company Photos © Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP | Bruce Damonte, 2015. All rights reserved.

SOM’s graphics studio used stenciling—a staple of backstage labeling—as a common language for environmental graphics.

eg magazine — 25

2016 Submission Guidelines Deadline: January 31, 2016 Late Deadline: February 14, 2016 For more information www.segd.org 202.638.5555

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Learn how you can go all out at 3MBrandSolutions.com.

© 3M 2015. All rights reserved. 3M is a trademark of 3M.

eg magazine — 27

BUILDING THE BRAND, TEXAS STYLE Populous creates a jaw-dropping recruiting experience for one of college football’s most successful programs. By Pat Matson

28 — eg magazine

Inside the lobby of Texas A&M’s newly renovated Bright Football Complex, a 50-ft.-tall glass tower houses an immersive media experience that gives recruits (and the public) a taste of what it’s like to play Aggie football.

D

eep in the heart of Texas, where football and tradition are sacred, Texas A&M University continues to build its dynasty—and its brand.

With a new $20 million, state-of-the art training facility designed by Populous, the Aggies keep showing how it’s done—building both a powerhouse football team and a megabrand.

ESPN described the Aggie locker room and headquarters as “an 18-year-old boy’s fantasy land.”

And that means the university got it right, because the primary role of the new 36,000-sq.-ft. Bright Football Complex is to recruit star athletes.

Catch that star

“We had two primary audiences: 15- to 18-yearold recruits, and our current players,” says Justin Moore, Texas A&M’s associate athletic director for football. “We wanted to create a place that would really wow the recruits, and also an environment that would be comfortable and energizing for our players, who spend virtually all day, every day here.”

Many of the star high school athletes who visit the complex are being wooed by other major colleges, says Brian Mirakian, principal of Populous. “Competition for top talent has gotten super high, so they only have a finite amount of

time to make a dramatic and lasting impression on these kids. The challenge is to create this powerful WOW moment the instant a recruit steps inside that building.”

The “WOW” moments come right away, starting in the lobby. There, with the school’s two Heisman trophies on proud display and superscaled team graphics climbing the walls, recruits are drawn into a series of interactive experiences on a carefully mapped route designed to tell the story of Aggie football in all its glory.

When your primary audience is teenaged boys glued to their mobile devices 24/7, those experiences had better be compelling. So the first moment in the “recruiting path” is a big one: an iconic 50-ft.tall glass tower inside the lobby that represents the team’s continual drive for the pinnacle of excellence.

When players step inside its base, they are literally and physically immersed in the excitement of Aggie football. A motion-activated, 180-degree sensory video experience captures the power and drama of game day at “the home of the 12th man.” Inside this immersive world, recruits get a vivid sense of what it’s like to get a pep talk from Head Coach Kevin Sumlin, run through the tunnel toward Kyle Field, and play to the deafening roar of 100,000 fans.

Recruits love to see the uniforms they’ll be wearing, so Populous and Adidas teamed up on the interactive Virtual Uniform System.

eg magazine — 29

The Adidas Fitting Room display borrows techniques from sophisticated retail store design.

The inner sanctum

Fashion and storytelling

Collaboration with Adidas, the university’s major “sideline partner,” added some unique assets to the project, including a rich archive of custom imagery and a suite of sophisticated interactive features.

The Adidas Virtual Uniform System is one of the most popular features in the center. “It turns out that one of the things the young players like the most is seeing the uniforms and equipment they’ll be wearing,” explains Mirakian. “We had some fun with that idea.”

The Populous team created a life-sized virtual figure that seems to float within its display case.

Visitors “dress” the virtual player by selecting from a menu of uniform components, creating a myriad of color and style combinations with helmets, jerseys, pants, socks, and cleats.

“We provided the conceptual idea and design intent, Adidas provided the content and media assets, and 1220 Exhibits and Silver Oaks mapped it out on a sophisticated gaming platform,” explains Mirakian. To culminate the experience and get a fun takeaway, recruits can enter their telephone numbers and the display will send them an animated gif and a jpeg file of the uniform they create—with their own name on the back of the jersey.

Adidas also provided imagery from a series of photo shoots designed to capture the story of Aggie football. “We wanted it to be very closely connected to the overall DNA of the brand, so when you’re in the space, you see this high-fidelity, custom imagery everywhere. There is a very strong story narrative throughout the space,” notes Mirakian.

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This vault-like space sets the tone for the real star of the show: the private “inner sanctum” that consists of the locker room and amenities such as a hydrotherapy room, a barber shop, and a conference room and auditorium.

“It’s a showpiece,” understates Mirakian.

While the public-facing spaces are geared toward telling the story of Texas A&M football, the private spaces are all about the day-to-day preparation, mental strength, motivation, and drive it takes to be an Aggie.

The centerpiece is a 5,000-sq.-ft. locker room that looks more like a nightclub. Custom solidsurface lockers in a metallic finish are engraved with the university logo, lit theatrically, and equipped with custom ventilation systems for those sweaty uniforms. Above each locker, and extending around the room in a continuous ribbon, are high-definition Christie LED MicroTile displays that feature each player’s photo, name, number, and even their Twitter handles. (The displays can also be programmed to play game highlights and other content as a single, ticker-like screen.)

Not far away, players can soak in a hydrotherapy pool while watching game highlights or training films, relax in the players’ lounge, or get a haircut in the barbershop, which features a custom mural by Adidas apparel designer MiQ Wilmott. When Sports Illustrated said the locker room “is nicer than your house,” they weren’t kidding.

On brand, all the time

All the elements of the complex, each step carefully storyboarded by Populous, were aligned with the Texas A&M brand. Populous made sure of this, says Mirakian, by listening. The team conducted numerous focus group sessions with the football coaching staff, university athletics, university officials, players, recruits, player family members, and students to learn what was important to them and how the brand story could be told.

“We wanted to focus on the graphic imagery, iconography, and experiences that would be most meaningful to the players,” says Mirakian.

“We wanted to create a sense of identity in every conceivable space they can personally own.”

In the end, the project team got it right. Players and the university are very happy with the new Bright Football Complex and confident it will keep attracting the top talent to the university. Mirakian concedes the university was a once-in-a-lifetime client.

“The goal from day one was to design something never before seen in college football. What made this project a success was a client who believed in a vision and constantly urged us to push the boundaries of what was possible.”

TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY BRIGHT COMPLEX RENOVATION Client Texas A&M University Location College Station, Texas Project Area 36,000 sq. ft.

This is not your typical sweaty locker room. Players enjoy a sleek, high-tech space with the vibe of a highend nightclub. Lockers have sophisticated ventilation systems, by the way.

In the hydrotherapy room, players can watch game footage or training films while soaking in hot and cold tubs.

Open Date August 2014 Budget $20.8 million Design Populous Design Team Brian Mirakian (director, principal in charge); Vito Privitera, Alan Bossert, Whitney Williams (project designers/interiors); Kelly Furlong (project designer/branding) Collaborators Vaughn Construction (project contractor), Adidas (media and content), 1220 Exhibits (fabrication), 12th Man Productions/ Texas A&M University (content), Silver Oaks (media and content development), MiQ Wilmott (mural) Suppliers Ceilings Plus (custom ceilings), Christie Digital Systems USA (LED displays), Figueras (chairs), Forms+Surfaces (metal wall panels), LG Hi-macs (solid-surface material), Nora (rubber flooring), Planar Systems Inc. (corridor LED displays), Sensitile (LED wall panels), Stonepeak (porcelain wall panels), Tandus (carpet) Photos Terry Wier

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LEADERS IN

WAYFINDING SIGNAGE AND INTERPRETIVE EXHIBITS UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY COMMONWEALTH STADIUM RENOVATION/EXPANSION, SIGNAGE, WAYFINDING AND SPECIALTY GRAPHICS LOCATION: LEXINGTON, KY DESIGNER: HNTB CORPORATION, ROSSTARRANT ARCHITECTS

PEORIA PLAYHOUSE CHILDREN’S MUSEUM CENTER LOCATION: PEORIA, IL DESIGNER: JACK ROUSE ASSOCIATES

Signs

Retail Exteriors

Fixtures

Displays

Exhibits

Visitors Centers

Bethlehem Steel Mill Hoover-Mason Trail Interpretive Walkway Graphics are embedded into steel to make one integral sign. The sign graphics and materials complement the architecture of the mile long historic steel mill.

Client: Bethlehem Redevelopment Authority Designer: Bluecadet (Lead Architect: WRT)

Historical interpretive signage was a very critical piece for our project, and we are very pleased with Direct Embed for their professionalism and integrity within a very tight schedule.

Keiko Tsuruta Cramer, Wallace Roberts and Todd

A Division of MS SIGNS, Inc.

T

he new Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital in Brisbane is the largest children’s hospital in Queensland, replacing two older facilities and bringing their staffs and services to a single 115,000-sq.-meter (1.2 million sq. ft.) hub of pediatric services for the state and region. Located in a busy inner-city neighborhood close to Brisbane’s Central Business District, the 12-story building is also linked to the former Mater Children’s hospital building, external parking garages, and the adjacent Centre for Children’s Health Research building.

Dotdash (Brisbane), a design practice specializing in wayfinding and visual communications in the built environment, worked with the hospital and its architectural team for more than seven years on the project, developing a comprehensive wayfinding system to guide patients and their families, visitors, and staff through the complex external and internal spaces. The result is a clear information system that reduces stress and environmental graphics that add a sense of joy and vibrancy to the hospital.

Navigating the tree

The hospital’s architectural design incorporates several research-based strategies shown to directly support patient health and wellbeing, including natural light, connections to the outside, and views of nature.

Clear wayfinding was another key factor, says Stefano Scalzo, principal of architectural firm Lyons (Melbourne), which teamed with Brisbane-based Conrad Gargett on the project. The team envisioned a “living tree,” with a network of double-height spaces (“branches”) radiating from two vertical, light-filled atria (“trunks”). The branch spaces extend to form framing portals for views of key landmarks, including nearby parks, distant mountains, and the Brisbane River. The same windows allow views into the building, helping to demystify the hospital experience, particularly for children.

“The ‘living tree’ concept is both the wayfinding and planning armature of the building,” says Scalzo.

“It evolved from our desire to create an architectural

LIVING TREE At the largest children’s hospital in Queensland, Dotdash plants a bold and cheerful wayfinding system to lighten the experience. By Pat Matson Located in Brisbane’s bustling Southbank neighborhood, the hospital connects with several related healthcare facilities and garages. The finned façade recalls the bright green and purple coloration of bougainvillea in adjacent parklands.

Colorful 3,800mm (12-ft.-tall) floor identifiers are the backbone of the wayfinding system. The numbers are fabricated MDF board and directories are aluminum.

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By Pat Matson

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environment that supported ease of wayfinding for patients, parents, and visitors.” (The living tree structure also acts as a large thermal chimney, allowing the building to breathe naturally on temperate days, he adds.)

The sheer size and complexity of the building, its location in a busy urban neighborhood, its linkages to other facilities, and its vertical orientation were key wayfinding challenges, says Despina Macris, Dotdash director. Early and ongoing collaboration with the architectural team ensured that the building itself carries some of the wayfinding functions: areas of high-contrast color on walls and floors highlight key decision points such as elevator lobbies and entrances, and levels are identified with a palette of bold colors.

Dotdash augmented the architectural cues with a system of more than 1,500 wayfinding signs, from super-scaled, 3,800mm (12-ft.-high) sculptural floor identifiers to interior and exterior directionals for the hospital, parking garages, clinical areas, in-patient and outpatient wards, and back of house areas. The scope also included 3,500 room signs.

The core of the program, and one of her team’s biggest challenges, says Macris, was to visually communicate the hospital floor plan in a simple, legible graphic map. Used on floor identifiers and simplified on elevator directories, it illustrates the stacked color system designating floors and shows the hospital’s two major public elevator cores (the “trunks”) and the levels (“branches”) they service.

Australia’s ADA

Another major challenge in the project was how to provide wayfinding assistance to vision-impaired visitors within such a complex building, says Domenic Nastasi, Dotdash senior designer.

“A simple strategy was required, rather than installing a complex system of Braille and tactile signs and tactile ground surface indicators (TGSIs), which can add to the clutter and confusion.” The solution was to install Braille and tactile signs and TGSIs at key arrival point intercoms where visionimpaired visitors can access wayfinding assistance in a dignified manner.

LADY CILENTO CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL WAYFINDING Client Queensland Health Location Brisbane Project Area 115,000 sqm Open Date November 2014 Budget AUD $1.2 billion (Signage fabrication, $2 million)

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All signs incorporate high color contrast and are located within clear visual zones, adds Nastasi.

Braille and tactile room signs incorporating grade 1 braille (uncontracted) were installed for all sanitary facilities, hearing augmentation spaces, and public accessible rooms.

User-centric

In a project that spanned more than seven years and involved numerous stakeholder groups, Macris says coordination was a major undertaking. Working with the hospital’s user groups was a particularly complex challenge—but one that Macris and her team welcomed because it directly informed the design outcomes.

Through a series of workshops, the team first identified the primary user groups: young patients, their adult parents/caregivers, and the hospital’s new staff. They then identified the key challenges facing each group and discovered that high stress levels, emotional distress, and a sense of urgency were the top concerns, along with the age of young patients and visitors.

Information, and emotion

Both the client and the architects recognized that strong wayfinding was important in creating a place where patients and their families could get the care they need with as little stress as possible.

The team also agreed that graphics could go a long way toward creating a positive, joyful environment.

Having the opportunity to collaborate with both parties from the outset of the project was a big factor in its success, says Macris. “We all worked closely together to develop concepts for the look and feel of the wayfinding system, and we were able to help steer their vision.”

The result, she adds, is a system of clean, crisp graphics that are highly legible to eliminate confusion and a cheerful, vibrant aesthetic that lightens the experience of the facility for its younger visitors.

“The thrust of the project rested on developing a strong wayfinding strategy for a very complex scenario. Our environmental graphics solutions were first in response to the wayfinding strategy— information plus emotion.”

Design Dotdash Design Team Domenic Nastasi (project lead); Erin Stromgren, Juri Yamamura, Keith Sullivan (design development); Heath Pedrola, Ida Molander (graphic elements) Consultants Conrad Gargett Lyons (architects), Abigroup/Lend Lease (managing contractor), Aurecon (project manager), Eric Martin & Associates (access consultant) Fabrication Albert Smith Signs Photos Dianna Snape, Christopher Frederick Jones

Several signs integrate the hospital’s arrival kiosk scanner, where patients can scan their appointment letters and get directions to their destination.

Elevator directories are a changeable magnetic system

by SignLink. Graphics are digitally printed on vinyl applied to the changeable aluminum panels.

Colorful graphics wrap around corners and help lighten the environment.

The numbers were cut from 6mm-thick aluminum panel.

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At the University of Michigan’s famed football program, nobody is bigger than the team.

A $9 million renovation of Schembechler Hall, the Wolverines’ football operations building, required a coordinated effort involving the best partners in design, fabrication and installation.

Rainier was selected to manufacture and install the graphical components that created a new 7,000-square foot experience for fans and recruits celebrating the program’s unrivaled success.

We worked with the design team at Downstream to make their vision a reality. The two-story Win Wall displays footballs representing more than 900 team wins—paying impressive homage to The Victors.

Success always takes a team: www.rainiersport.com

DESIGN MUSEUM, REDESIGNED

With the stroke of a super-powered digital pen, the Cooper Hewitt reinvents itself and the very way that visitors experience a museum. by Leslie Wolke

Visitors can use the nub of the pen to “steal” objects from the museum’s digital archive, or use it to draw on custom touch table surfaces.

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very day, visitors to the Cooper Hewitt make off with about 30 artifacts each, plucked from the glass cases and archives of the nation’s design museum. From teapots to laptops, the best examples of craft and industry are streaming out the ornate iron doors into New York’s Upper East Side.

And before these visitors leave, they might even draw on the walls.

Not to worry—guards are on patrol in the gilded-age Andrew Carnegie mansion that houses the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, and its curators are thrilled with the thievery and the graffiti.

In 2011, the Cooper Hewitt closed to embark on a three-year, $91 million renovation. Everything about the museum—from its brand identity to its exhibit casework—was questioned and reimagined by a team led by visionary director (and IDEO founder) Bill Moggridge. Sadly, Moggridge died in 2012, but his mantra “people learn best by doing” set the course for the groundbreaking suite of digital experiences that debuted when the museum reopened in December 2014.

Bringing the collections to life

The museum assembled a dream team to collaborate with the staff and envision the new museum experience. Pentagram designed a new identity, signage and graphics. Diller Scofidio + Renfro redesigned the visitor flow and exhibition spaces.

And Local Projects developed the interactive media that radically changed the visitor experience.

Cooper Hewitt Labs, the museum’s inhouse tech team, had been established during Moggridge’s tenure. Its first task was to create a digital infrastructure upon which content and services could be created and shared with the public. Seb Chan, the Labs’ Director of Digital and Emerging Media until recently, explains that while development teams are rare in museum organizations, “an internal group gives you some agency over the future” rather than relying on a continual parade of consultants. His team created a platform that could house and broadcast the results of a parallel effort to catalog and digitize the museum’s entire collection of more than 200,000 objects. This platform brings the collection to life,

Local Projects designed the new interactives to encourage social interaction among visitors. The experience is heightened when visitors share it.

(Photo: Ed Blake)

Nine touchscreen tables give visitors access to Cooper Hewitt’s vast collections through a new digital platform developed by an in-house tech team called Cooper Hewitt Labs. (Photo: Ed Blake)

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both through engaging digital experiences onsite and on the museum’s robust website.

The core of the Cooper Hewitt collection consists of decorative arts acquired by the three granddaughters of Peter Cooper from the late 1890s to 1930. The treasures were amassed as a study collection for the students of Cooper Union, the industrialist’s avant-garde college for arts, architecture, and engineering.

With only 17,000 sq. ft. of exhibition space in the renovated mansion, it was essential to create a virtual collection that could be seen in spite of the limitations of physical space. In the spirit of Cooper’s belief that education should be free and accessible, the museum’s collections database is publicly available via their website and as a free feed to other websites through open-source developers’ tools.

This is a pen

Local Projects conceived a bold and ambitious idea as the core of the onsite digital experience: an interactive pen that would serve as the visitor’s identity throughout the museum and that would take them away from their phone and bring them closer to design.

Local Projects’ founder Jake Barton explains, “We wanted to create this new object that would be a point of conversation and a point of creativity for each individual visitor.” It had to be a new device, not a smartphone app, because, as Chan says, “We’re irritated by our phones. We tolerate them because they’re awesome, but we do wish we could keep them in our pockets.” The goal of the museum experience, and of the pen itself, was to change passive browsers into active, engaged visitordesigners. As Chan is fond of saying, “Design is for doing, not just looking.”

The entire team embraced the idea immediately, but as Chan says with a wry smile, “The path from concept to reality was extremely tortuous.” The challenge was daunting: engineer a new interaction device packed with leading-edge sensors, sculpt it into a genuinely intuitive and delightful form, give it superpowers to inspire and design—and make it feel like it belongs in the nation’s design museum. “It was so ambitious, it still blows my mind that we would build a custom piece of hardware,” says Kristen Svorka, Senior Interactive Project Manager at Local Projects.

The pen itself has some heft to it—thick as sidewalk chalk and twice as long as a Sharpie, it won’t fit easily in a pocket. On one end is a pliable, rubbery nub that acts as a stylus on the nine touch tables dotted around the museum. The other end terminates in a slant, exposing an oval surface marked with a plus sign. Touch that angled end to a plus sign you find on an object label, and you’ve added that object to your virtual collection. (Or, in a way, stolen it right off the wall.) The pen flashes three tiny lights and quivers to let you know you’ve nabbed the cherished item.

The pen was developed in collaboration with five technology firms and manufactured by the Spanish device maker Sistelnetworks. Its NFC 42 — eg magazine

sensor (short for Near Field Communication, via radio waves) reads information embedded in a tiny chip in the label—called an NFC tag—and stores that information on the pen. Visitors can access anything they’ve saved on the pen by visiting a custom web address printed on their admission ticket.

Visitors can also use the pen is to draw on the touch tables. As you enter the museum, an 84-in., high-definition touchscreen table beckons in the soft light of the Carnegies’ great hall. Streams of circular icons drift by slowly, meandering the length of the table. Use the pen to pull an alluring disk toward you and the full image unfolds, along with some tools to explore and create. Local Projects named these personal work areas “placemats.”

On your placemat, trace the curve of Frank Gehry’s Cross Check Chair and a dozen objects with similar curves appear. Love the yellow hue of a 1970s teacup? Click on its color tag, “lemonchiffon,” and you’ll be dazzled by tableware, lithographs, wallpaper, and even an electric clock that all share that sunny shade.

The digital infrastructure created by the Labs team makes this serendipitous surfing possible, since all artifacts are tagged with metadata for sorting and searching. And Local Projects’ inviting interface makes it fun. If you’d like to try your hand at designing a lamp, a vase, or a chair, the placemat becomes a digital drawing pad with a simple set of drawing tools along with a rendered view of your design in progress as if it were featured in Metropolis Magazine.

Smaller touch tables (32- and 55-in.) are positioned in the major galleries. They feature the same stream and placemat interface, with the assortment of featured objects corresponding to the theme of the gallery.

In the Immersion Room, the Cooper Hewitt’s massive wallpaper collection comes to life. Visitors access 10,000+ patterns and create their own designs, which are then projected on the walls.

(Photo: Local Projects) The Cooper Hewitt pen, as thick as a piece of sidewalk chalk and twice as long as a Sharpie, was developed in collaboration with five technology firms and manufactured by the Spanish device maker Sistelnetworks.

Its NFC sensor reads information embedded in a tiny chip on object labels and stores that information on the pen. Visitors can access anything they’ve saved on the pen by visiting a custom web address printed on their admission ticket.

COOPER HEWITT, SMITHSONIAN DESIGN MUSEUM INTERACTIVES Client Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum Location New York Project Area 17,000 sq. ft.

Open Date December 2014 Design Local Projects Design Team Local Projects: Jake Barton, Kristen Svorka, Paul Hoppe , Angela Chen, Sundar Raman, Philipp Rockel, Gal Sasson, Oriol Ferrer Mesia, Erika Tarte, Edna Lee, Mateo Zlatar, Kimberly Gim, Mark Van de Korput, Kristin Lovejoy, Miriam Lakes, Tyler Parker, Andreas Borg Cooper Hewitt: Caroline Baumann, Seb Chan, Aaron Straup Cope, Micah Walter, Katie Shelley, Sam Brenner Fabrication Ideum (interactive touchtables and wall screens), D & P Inc. (integrators for Immersion Room), GE / Sistelnetworks / Undercurrent (pen production) Collaborators Diller Scofidio + Renfro (renovation architect), Pentagram (identity, signage and graphics, website, exhibition graphics), Chester Jenkins/Constellation (custom font design) Photos Ed Blake, Local Projects, Pentagram

Making wallpaper cool again

Tucked in a far corner of the second floor in what was the Carnegies’ nursery is the Immersion Room.

And immersive it is. A 55-in. touch table in the center of the blank-walled room offers two visitors at a time the opportunity to browse the largest collection of wallpaper in the U.S. (10,000+) and sketch their own designs, complete with repeat and offset options. With a projection system that would make an interior designer weep, visitors tap the “Go live!” button and their own designs unfurl on the walls around them.

Over the years, the museum’s wallpaper collection has been publicly derided as evidence that the institution had lost its relevance. In 2011, AIGA CEO Richard Grefé had predicted its demise in Fast Company: “How long can people defend a wallpaper collection?” Where others saw stodgy scraps, Svorka and the Local Projects team saw the potential for interactivity. Social media has exploded with selfies of visitors posing in the Immersion Room, dipped head to toe in the light of their own creations.

Local Projects had some very relevant experience to draw upon, specifically their suite of interactive media for Gallery One at the Cleveland Museum of Art. One of the lessons learned there, says Local Projects Art Director Paul Hoppe, was that most people don’t go to museums alone, “so we put a lot of work into making these experiences flexible and inclusive.” These playful activities spark impromptu conversations among companions as well as strangers, augmenting the shared experience and mirroring the design process itself. i eg magazine — 43

Metrics for success

The Cooper Hewitt, housed in Andrew Carnegie’s 1903 mansion on Fifth Avenue, reopened in 2014 after a $91 million renovation. Pentagram redesigned the identity and environmental graphics, while Diller Scofidio + Renfro reimagined the exhibition space and experience.

The pen has been in use for almost a year and the Labs team has been analyzing all the data it generates. Nearly all visitors choose to use the free pen and on average, they collect about 30 objects and save one design that they created. On the museum website, visitors can learn more about the objects they saved and download their designs.

About a third of visitors have visited their personal collection online after their visit. And average time spent at the museum is hovering at over an hour and a half, proving that there’s lots to do in the modestly-sized space.

Throughout the design process, Chan kept his team on point with this definition of their mission: “A ‘design museum’ sits between the art museum and the science museum. It can draw attention to the processes, choices, [and] human decisions in the making, not just the finished object.”

Underlying the undeniable cool factor of the pen and its companion screens is the enchanting realization that the Cooper Hewitt experience echoes the design process itself: playful, collaborative, spontaneous, and serendipitous— with a bit of thievery and graffiti along the way.

Leslie Wolke (lesliewolke.com) is a wayfinding technology consultant and writer based in Austin and New York City.

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INSPIRATION (48)

Thank You Very Much Donor recognition programs say it eloquently, and forever.

(58)

Sketchbook Andrea Fineman on her art of sketching (60)

Workspace RTKL’s Dallas office measures up with a “tools-of-the-trade” theme.

(63)

2016 SEGD Events Calendar A year of education, inspiration, and connection

THANK YOU VERY MUCH Donor recognition programs say it eloquently, and forever.

By Pat Matson

For hospitals, cultural institutions, and other non-profits that rely on generous donors to help build that new research facility or contemporary art wing, saying “thank you” graciously is vital.

“Nothing is more important than expressing our thanks to the people who make our programs and facilities possible,” agrees Carey Perloff, artistic director of San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater, which recently opened a second performance venue in the city. “It’s really important that it be done beautifully and respectfully and with some wit—and also flexibility to add new donors as you grow.”

SAINT JOSEPH HOSPITAL Gensler At this Denver hospital, Gensler’s task was to create a dynamic, flexible donor wall to acknowledge current and prospective donors in a unique way. The team moved donor recognition from an interior wall to a glass curtain wall to take advantage of natural light and created a stained-glass effect that washes the corridor (and visitors) with vibrant color. Donor names appear in vinyl on acrylic panels hung from a cable system. (Fabrication: 3D Identity. Photo: Ryan Gobuty/Gensler)

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See more great donor recognition projects at www.segd.org/giving-thanks

ANN B. BARSHINGER CANCER INSTITUTE ex;it For the new addition to Lancaster General Health’s suburban outpatient pavilion, ex;it created a welcome/donor recognition wall that uses an organic flow of colors and lines to represent the nature of the journey for people with cancer. Red signifies the moment of distress when cancer is discovered, and the sequence of warm to cool colors represents the healing process or reconciliation of living with the disease. Donor names and colors are embedded as an interlaminate film between two panes of glass and the curving installation is illuminated by LEDs mounted behind it. (Fabrication: McGrory Glass. Photo: Larry Lever Photography)

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THANK YOU VERY MUCH

AMERICAN CONSERVATORY THEATER Skidmore Owings & Merrill LLC San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater recently opened its second performing arts venue in a formerly derelict movie house called The Strand. Graphics inspired by stencils—a staple of backstage labeling—express the direct, stripped-down simplicity of the theater’s space and program.

The signature half-moon punctuation marks from A.C.T.’s logo are punched out of long strips of aluminum and scaled to denote contribution levels. Names appear in vinyl on the flexible grid. (Fabrication: Thomas Swan Sign Company. Photo: © Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP | Bruce Damonte, 2015. All rights reserved.)

TELUS SPARK MUSEUM Entro Communications TELUS Spark is Calgary’s newest cultural landmark, a 153,000-sq.-ft. purpose-built science center. Donors are honored on a tapestry of burnished metal type cut from a single sheet of aluminum, floating off a massive central concrete stairwell.

(Fabrication: archetype. Photo: Jason Dziver Photography)

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See more great donor recognition projects at www.segd.org/giving-thanks

TEACH FOR AMERICA Pentagram At Teach for America’s New York headquarters, Michael Bierut’s team integrated donor recognition into two tables in the public lobby. A trough in the bright red, round tables holds 240 pencils, stamped with the names of major donors and national board members. Yellow pencils honor donors, red pencils name board members, and natural colored pencils are reserved for future donors. (Fabrication: Design Communications Ltd. Photo: Martin Seck)

GIBNEY DANCE Poulin + Morris Gibney Dance’s mission is to use movement, creativity, and performance to effect social change and personal transformation. For its new second home in Manhattan, Poulin + Morris created graphics that embody that movement. Taking Gibney’s existing logotype of two horizontal bands set at dramatic angles, P+M designed horizontal strips of white cast resin bearing donor names in three-dimensional type. In shades of grey to differentiate donor levels, the names seem to dance off the walls, another visual play on movement. (Fabricator: Design Communications Ltd. Photo: Deborah Kushma)

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THANK YOU VERY MUCH HASTINGS COLLEGE SCIENCE CENTER RDG Planning & Design The Morrison-Reeves Science Center is the new epicenter of Hastings College in Hastings, Nebraska. It was designed around the theme “to put science on display,” and RDG’s donor recognition solution continues the theme. Each donor name is encapsulated under an off-the-shelf light-gathering magnifying dome. Names were printed on clear vinyl on the backs of the domes, and the individual cells were composed in an 8- by 6-ft. molecular pattern. The colors and sizes of the magnifiers denote giving levels, and blank domes provide for future expansion. (Fabrication: LOOK Architectural Coatings. Photos: Kessler Photography)

BRIC HOUSE Poulin + Morris Since 1979, BRIC has been producing arts and media programs throughout Brooklyn.

As part of its $35 million renovation, Poulin + Morris deconstructed BRIC’s parallelogram logotype into various planes, perspectives, and dimensions for signage. The donor recognition wall is based on an interlocking modular system outlined in a grid-like pattern. Cast-resin panels displaying donor information are interspersed throughout the grid, creating a three-dimensional honeycomb pattern with flexibility to add future donors.

(Fabricator: AGS /Adelphia Graphic Systems, Inc. Photo: Deborah Kushma)

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See more great donor recognition projects at www.segd.org/giving-thanks

EMIQUON NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE Signature Design Emiquon National Wildlife Refuge encompasses 11,122 acres of wetlands in Fulton County, Ill. and is the premiere site for The Nature Conservancy’s floodplain restoration work in the Upper Mississippi River system. To honor donors in an intentionally non-hierarchical way, and in sync with the natural landscape, Signature Design conceived 8- by 3-ft. stainless steel panels that mimic the way Emiquon’s reed beds punctuate sweeping horizontal views. Wildlife species rendered in two layers of cut-outs open up views of the sky. (Fabrication: Engraphix. Photo: Jason Beverlin, The Nature Conservancy)

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THANK YOU VERY MUCH THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO MEDICINE Cloud Gehshan Associates The Center for Care and Discovery, designed

by Rafael Viñoly, is the new heart of the University of Chicago Medicine. Because the “wall” reserved for donor recognition is covered in beautiful back-painted glass, Cloud Gehshan was challenged to create a freestanding structure. It had to be free of sharp edges, child-friendly, angled to discourage soda cans, readable from a wheel chair, slim profile, and updatable. CGA chose scratch-resistant matte zinc for name panels and edge-lit low-iron glass for upper-level benefactors. An interactive kiosk allows visitors to search by donor names and access benefactor stories. (Fabrication: Poblocki Sign Company. Software: Craig Johnson.

Photo: CGA)

MIDDELBURY COLLEGE FIELD HOUSE Sasaki Associates Middlebury College’s new Virtue Field House is one of the most unique training and competition venues in collegiate athletics, with an indoor practice space, competition track, and connection to the larger campus sports complex. Sasaki designed the donor recognition wall in harmony with the building’s architectural materials and color palette, choosing laser-etched western hemlock, waterjet-cut stainless steel, and silkscreened painted-aluminum panels for a sophisticated and nature-inspired installation.

(Fabrication: Design Communications Ltd. Photo: Brett Simison)

54 — eg magazine

See more great donor recognition projects at www.segd.org/giving-thanks

UNIVERSIDAD DE MONTERREY Pentagram For the new Tadao Ando-designed art center at Mexico’s Universidad de Monterrey, Pentagram partner Abbott Miller and team created graphics that complement and contrast with the raw physicality of the monumental concrete structure. The donor recognition sculpture consists of more than 100 three-sided bars of clear, polished acrylic hanging on lengths of cable, with donor names engraved on the surface of the prism-like rods. They shift in the air and change with the light, their crystalline forms setting off the building’s immense concrete mass. (Photo: Jorge Taboada)

eg magazine — 55

56 — eg magazine

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eg magazine — 57

Andrea Fineman Adaptive Path Andrea Fineman is a designer at Adaptive Path, a user experience design and consulting firm in San Francisco. Fineman is also a coder, a service design enthusiast, and a 2015 graduate of Carnegie Mellon’s master’s program in interaction design. Her research on customer/employee interaction, personalization, and data is published in SEGD’s online academic research journal Communication + Place.

58 — eg magazine

“ Making a quick sketch of

an interface that seems simple in your mind can reveal fundamental flaws in the idea.”

eg magazine — 59

CallisonRTKL Dallas: Tools of the Trade

Located in the heart of the city, CallisonRTKL Dallas was in need of an upgrade to match the rapid revitalization efforts of Downtown and the Arts District.

Due to the size of the office, the design team implemented a phased renovation, first focusing on the public areas. Phase One (completed in 2014) included 15,000 sq. ft. of conference and collaboration space. From the street-level lobby to the conference center and commons area at the heart of the office, the design focused on both innovation and creating an inspiring environment for staff, clients, and visitors. It was reconfigured for openness and access to daylight and views, previously hindered by the original fit-out of the space.

A recurring theme in CallisonRTKL offices is an integral graphics program based on the “tools of the trade.” In the Dallas office, architectural and engineering measuring scales are featured, from a white-on-white interior lobby mural to metric and imperial rulers climbing the elevator shaft. Phase Two, including 50,000 sq. ft. of office and support space, was completed in July 2015.

60 — eg magazine

CALLISONRTKL DALLAS Graphics Thom McKay (senior vice president), Jill Popowich (project manager, senior designer), Megan Sanchez, Designer Interior Design Neal Hudson (project manager, senior designer); Corcoran Canfield, Nate Ferrance, Kate Herman (designers) Architecture Team Dean Battle (project manager), Mary Hibbs (designer), Kristina Livingston (office manager), Dylana Wilson (administrator) Fabrication Design Communications Ltd. (graphics), Designtex/Loophouse (rug) Photos Charles Davis Smith

eg magazine — 61

eg magazine — 61

Ad index 3M 3mgraphics.com

LEDConn ledconn.com

56

Color-Ad Signs and Exhibits 32 Color-Ad.com

Matthews International matthewsid.com

45

Designtex designtex.com

Matthews Paint matthewspaint.com

BC

Design Communications Ltd. 1 designcommunicationsltd.com

Nanov Display nanov.info

62

Direct Embed Coating Systems directembedcoating.com

Neiman & Company neimanandco.com

56

Poblocki Sign Co. poblocki.com

46

IBC 8

Rainier Industries rainier.com

39

Gemini geminisignproducts.com

2

SMI Sign Systems smisigns.com

38

General Glass generalglass.com

57

GraphTec graphtecinc.com

IFC

Systech Signage Technology systech-signage.com

Image Manufacturing Group 18 imgarchitectural.com

Way to Go waytogo.digital

62

L & H Sign lhsigns.com

Winsor Fireform winsorďŹ reform.com

44

Gable Signs www.gablesigns.com

L & M Architectural Signs/Presa presasign.com

62 — eg magazine

27

20

33

19 7

For active links to advertisers, visit www.segd.org and click on eg magazine

WAY TO GO Implementing your designs for digital wayfinding, dynamic signage and interactive exhibits.

215.219.3381 | connect@waytogo.digital www.waytogo.digital

2016 SEGD EVENTS

03.15 - 03.16 DIGITAL SIGNAGE EXPO LAS VEGAS

SEGD WAYFINDING

04.14 - 04.15 MIA INTL AIRPORT MIAMI

06.09 - 06.11 THE WESTIN SEATTLE

07.14 LOS ANGELES

SEGD E&E

08.18 - 08.19 WASHINGTON DC

10.27 - 10.28 PART OF NYDSW NEW YORK

Save the Dates and Invest in Your Professional Development SEGD events have been specially developed to educate, inspire, and connect busy experiential design professionals like you.

Save the dates to invest in yourself and your business in 2016! eg egmagazine magazine——631 segd.org | +1-202-638-5555

REGISTER NOW AND SAVE! EARLY RATES UNTIL 12.31.2015 CALL +1 202 638 5555 | SEGD.ORG 64 — eg magazine Photo: Seattle Skyline View From Queen Anne Hill, by Daniel Schwen, Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International Public License

ACHITECTURAL DATA PLANKS

MULTISTORY DIGITAL TOWER

STREET SIDE IDENTITY

SEE MAGNIFICENCE FROM EVERY ANGLE...

VERIZON DESTINATION STORE, CHICAGO Michigan Avenue, otherwise known as the MagniďŹ cent Mile, attracts millions of visitors each year from all over the world. Now, this high-end shopping district has a new kid on the block... The Verizon Destination Store.

GableVision recently completed this exciting project for Verizon featuring energetic digital displays, custom accent applications, a strong exterior logo brand and much more. To see details about this project, visit us at gablevision.com or gablesigns.com. And if you are heading to Chicago, be sure to stop in and check it out!

SIGNS | DIGITAL DISPLAYS | LIGHTING

NO. 15, 2015

NO. 15, 2015

eg EXPERIENTIAL GRAPHICS MAGAZINE

1935

Ed Matthews opens first Matthews Paint store on Belmont Avenue in Chicago

1955

Ed Matthews Jr. joins Matthews Paint

1968

Moves corporate office to Wheeling, IL

1993 1995

Moves corporate office to Pleasant Prairie, WI

1985

Joins SEGD

2009 2015

Introduces MAP-LV Ultra Low VOC. Moves to Delaware, OH

WWW.SEGD.ORG

800.323.6593 • www.matthewspaint.com •

2012

PPG buys Acquires 1-Shot, Lacryl Matthews Paint and Field Master

ACT’S LADY CILENTO THE NEW SECOND ACT CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL COOPER HEWITT

THANK YOU VERY MUCH