Jane Davis Doggett is a living legend of remarkable talent: both an unsung hero of graphic design who revolutionized airport wayfinding and a prolific artist in multiple mediums.

Doggett recently took her place in the canon of SEGD Fellows at the 2018 SEGD Conference Experience Minneapolis, beside experiential graphic design trailblazers including Massimo Vignelli, Lance Wyman, Wayne Hunt, Robert Venturi, Sue Gould, David Gibson, Donald Meeker and Jan Lorenc, among others.

Doggett designed wayfinding systems for 40 major airport projects, many of which are still in use today. She was also the first to use: color, letter and symbol coding; airport signing on approach highways to increase safety and reduce the number of signs as well as architectural and brand integrations of airport symbols. 

Doggett is a native of Nashville, Tenn., who first attended Newcomb College at Tulane University, later earning her MFA from Yale University School of Art and Architecture in 1956. At Yale, she studied architecture, color and graphic design, most notably under Louis Kahn, Josef Albers and Alvin Eisenman, whom she considers major influences, together with her contemporaries, architects Frank Gehry and Bob Stern, painter Jasper Johns and late graphic designers Ivan Chermayeff and Sam Antupit.

In addition to her work in airports, she has worked on prominent design projects and wayfinding programs for museums, convention centers, performing arts and public transportation systems, all while maintaining a creative hand in fine arts. She counts the ever-changing seascape of Atlantic Maine and Florida and southern architecture among sources of inspiration for her artwork, which has been exhibited in museums and art centers nationwide.

Her IconoChrome™series of dimensional images produced mainly in the last decade, represents philosophically profound messages—sayings, psalms and proverbs—in vibrant geometric shapes. It’s a body of work directly related to her book, “Talking Graphics,” that has been acclaimed for its ability to transcend language barriers. “IconoChromes are graphic expressions of the meanings of words,” she says of the work. “They grew out of environmental graphics basics.”

Doggett is the recipient of numerous accolades, to include: the Sterling Fellow Award (Yale University), Outstanding Alumna Award (Newcomb College), Lifetime Achievement in the Arts Award (Arts Council of Martin County, Fla.), National Award of Merit (AIA), Progressive Architecture Award (AISI Design in Steel Citation), two Design Awards (US DoT and NEA) and was inducted into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame in 2016.

Her extraordinary accomplishments notwithstanding, Doggett was grateful for the recognition from SEGD. “It’s been rewarding to me to be recognized in my field with this honor from SEGD,” she remarked. “I’m extremely proud of it.” And, she says the fellow award is especially gratifying because she has endured a certain amount of anonymity in her career—students often study her work, but do not know her name.

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Approaching age 88, Doggett is making and showing art and giving talks about her work. She’s sharp and witty, too—cracking jokes in her charming Tennessee accent as we discussed her life and work.

Tell us about your youth like in Nashville—how did you become interested in graphic design, specifically? 

Well, it happened quite naturally because I just drew all the time.

To keep me occupied in church when I was little—four and five, you know, squirmy ages—my mother would give me a pad and crayons. I call it ‘my Crayola period.’ And even now, my heart skips a beat whenever I see a package of crayons. We ate them too, you know? I guess the wax didn’t hurt us. One day, I discovered that the backs of hymnals had blank pages, so I began to fill those. When it was discovered I was drawing in the hymnals, my mother had to purchase them and so I think it cost quite a lot for me to become an artist.

I drew in the backs of my mother’s books, too. That was my beginning in graphic arts. I suppose it was a graphic urge to draw in a book, so I would be quote ‘published.’ I had the support of my family always; my parents knew that I was gifted.

Was it difficult to be a woman in the design field in the 1950s and 60s?

I am frequently asked this question: there were only a few things along the way that I can remember [being issues]. I don’t feel that I was ever blocked in my career.

It seems to me, that maybe I was respected for the fact that I could bring talent to the table. My Yale colleagues gave me great support—they would tell me about projects and prospects—and knew that I was working to build a bridge between architects and graphics. 

I did not feel I was going against the grain, because philosophically we were thinking about women coming into the fore anyway. I think it was in the air. Women ought not to feel threatened by those types of problems; if they are prepared, they’ll be respected.

The experiential graphic design field is nearly 50 percent women now.

Isn’t that wonderful?

Back then, women made up about five percent of architects and engineers; I was frequently the only woman at the airport planning table.

But then, I was doing a new thing—architectural graphics, as I called it originally—which became environmental graphics. I think a logical expanding of the field and it happened quickly, because they were building airports as the jets were coming down the assembly line. It was really great to be contributing to a pioneering period of something as important as this.

Here’s the deal: It was wonderful, I had a marvelous adventure in the Jet Age.

What does wayfinding mean to you and why and why do you think it became such a big part of your life? 

Wayfinding is more than just putting a sign up, it’s a series, a sequencing of information in continuity.

You’re working with sequencing of signs or lighting or whatever means in the environment to persuade the movement of traffic. That thread of continuity, which can be created with signs put in the right place for viewing by car or by foot, that to me is what ‘wayfinding’ says. As a term, I really like it.

At Yale, we were envisioning a future of really large complicated spaces. I could see the need for being able to manage those from a human level—I was thinking about experiences in the built environment and human scale. I remember knowing my ideas were right on because I could see what was being done architecturally under Louis Kahn—what was being envisioned—and it was big.

So, that’s why.

When I had the opportunity to work on the Memphis airport Roy Harrover and I were these young kids from Yale.  We were shocked out of our minds that we got the project, but I guess young people always think more positively.

After that very successful, award-winning airport, I was selected to do Houston. My fellow classmates from Yale, Ivan Chermayeff and Tom Geismar were also competing for the Houston airport. The reason that I got it I’m sure was because of the outstanding graphics I did for Memphis. It set my course to do an awful lot of airports. 

Tell us about what was special about the Memphis Airport.

The Memphis Airport was a first at the time. We were able to do an awful lot in that particular facility that set graphic standards—we created the band with a common alphabet and I used German standard typefaces as my source [for ‘Alphabet A’].

I recognized that if you were looking at a continuous horizontal band, particularly at an angle, that vertical stroke or tight condensed letters would ‘close in’ and become hard to read, whereas your expanded more square-cut ones would retain good definition. I knew this from my studies at Yale; we were given a terrific basic training in typeface design. We created signs that spanned corridors overhead, instead of positioning them where people could block lines of sight. That became the standard at Memphis and carried over to Houston.

Many of the airport wayfinding innovations you worked on, we take for granted today, like color, letter and symbol coding and the optimization of typography. Was it a revelation at the time?

It really was.

Roy and I went to look at several airports and they were terrible—they looked like penny arcades. The airlines didn’t help because of their secrecy and corporate competition, which is just good old America, but the thing is, eventually they had to work together in a terminal.

The jet age grew so quickly, that’s why I think there was a disorder from the public point of view. The technology was so remarkable and when it happened, there was no airport ready. If an airline needed a sign, then they would go to a sign maker, who usually had no graphic design education; there was really no such thing as a graphic designer involved.

It was serendipitous; I was at the right place at the right time.

Unlike the sign makers, we always used a system. We used color coding, letters or numbers and we grouped the airlines to a big letter A, D, or U, for example; Delta liked to have terminal D. We did a two-color system in Tampa that is working to this day—they are still using the A and B system with this big expansion—because it’s still working!

What came next?

I put more emphasis on sign system continuity on roadways, with design innovations in the supports with sign boards integrated, the one at Miami International is a perfect example. I think that was really a first—because previously it was the realm of the engineers with their manual and green signs, where graphics would start with architecture at the terminal. But we discovered that people were driving into the airport not knowing where the hell they were.

I remember the worst thing was when I was working on an airport that had just a straight approach roadway: There wasn’t enough space and time for the signs! A curve off the highway would have made a much better flow of traffic, but the engineers were so proud, saying it will save money and pavement to have a straight approach with a T intersection. It made nothing but a traffic jam.

So, signs are done in continuity with the roadway formation. There’s an exchange between those two things and you sometimes need more roadway to display your messages; the fastest way to get there is the communicated way—not necessarily the shortest physical distance. 

What compelled and propelled you to pursue these design concepts that many others weren’t concerned with at the time?

I think that it had a lot to do with the demands for various destinations.

Because the airport became so much busier and offered so many more choices, it did lay stress on the graphic designer as a signage programmer. An airport is rather like a city, with restaurant choices, retail and integrated marketing into the facility.

And, Americans want to drive everywhere, so the parking and rental car facilities have become just like separate terminals. I believe some airports make more revenue on parking and rental cars than they get from the airlines.

What role has testing played in your work?

In the beginning, there was a lot of testing.

One example of testing ad nauseum, happened on a project for the Newark Port Authority, where we were working with the engineers who essentially invented I-95, to include Lou Bender. They were responsible for those green signs with letters made of reflective buttons—they predated 3M’s reflective coating, which at least preserved the integrity of the letter form.

We had to test our alphabet against the interstate alphabet, because the architects wanted to use the same lettering outside and inside—and we did, too. So, we had to test it. I can remember one of the guys that worked for me was so game—he went up on a catwalk spanning six lanes in Newark to put up the test sign. All of a sudden, here came this huge storm of rain and lightning as he was putting letters up and he was soaked and nearly electrocuted!

But we had to test, because it was the Jersey Turnpike—you were supposed to get to heaven that way, I think. It was Bender’s baby, and here we were coming to do an airport for the Port Authority in Newark. We were going to put in these things with color on them and with symbols and letters. We were violating the Jersey Turnpike standard for God’s sake!

The director at the time just said, 'Well I think this gal knows what she’s doing, let’s give her a chance.'

Obviously, you never really retired: What has been your continuous source of inspiration and energy? 

I don’t believe you ever stop being an artist.

Between travel, the internet and other various communications media, so much information comes to us. There are a lot of sources of inspiration and exchanging of different cultures and it’s a refreshing thing.

We’re cutting down the barriers of language when we use symbology and color in signage. They recently discovered that Neanderthals were using some symbols. That is thrilling, because symbolism was the beginning of language!

As an artist, I'm always going to have ideas.

What would you tell someone interested in the design field?

I don’t mind saying it: I do think that there is such a thing as talent.

But, with any of your gifts, you have to apply them: You have to have good education. It would be a pity if you didn’t or weren't able to follow your gifts. People with talent start out early drawing and looking at the world in dimension, and so forth. The more you practice, the better your vision becomes and the better you can see dimension.

We all know people who have been discouraged from going into art and design. It hasn't always been thought of as highly as the medical field, legal field, hedge funds, or whatever things people might want their children to do to make money, but, you can certainly have a good life in art, design, architecture and engineering.

I don't know where we'd be without them.

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Neither do we.

Watch the short film “Jane Davis Doggett: Graphic Artist, WAYFINDING IN THE JET AGE”

Accolades for Jane Davis Doggett

“One of the pioneers in our industry that has influenced countless designers, Jane’s work was ahead of its time and she was one of the first woman leaders in our field. Her story has seemed to have been lost over the years and it one that is worth rediscovering and celebrating. She fits all the categories of an SEGD Fellow.” —John Lutz, SEGD President 2016-2017 and Partner, Selbert Perkins Design

“Jane Doggett is one the great pioneers of EG. We all owe a lot to her and the ground-breaking work she did to establish this profession. I’m thrilled she is now a Fellow of SEGD.” —David Gibson, FSEGD, SEGD President 1991-1992 and Partner, Two Twelve

"Who knew! I thought I had a handle on EGD history, but learning about (and meeting) this impressive woman was, for me, the highlight of the recent 2018 SEGD conference. A terrific early practitioner whose work and groundbreaking approach to wayfinding underlays much of today’s basic best practices. Today we call it user-centric design, but you can see the roots of this approach in Doggett’s work from fifty-plus years ago: clarity, logic, simplicity—all to make airports understandable, welcoming and easily usable."—Wayne Hunt, FSEGD, SEGD President 1999-2000 and Principal, Hunt Design

“Jane was one of the true founders of the profession of Wayfinding. She did 40 airport projects at the beginning of the Jet Age, introducing the systems of Airport wayfinding that we can all still recognize today.” —Clive Roux, SEGD CEO

>> Jane Davis Doggett’s bio

>> Jane Davis Doggett, Environmental Graphics Pioneer

>> Watch the video of Jane Davis Doggett’s acceptance speech.

>> Meet more of SEGD's distinguished SEGD Fellows, including Massimo Vignelli, Deborah Sussman, David Gibson, and many others.

>> For more great EGD/XGD content in your areas of interest, discover SEGD's Xplore Experiential Graphic Design index!

During the 2018 SEGD Conference Experience Minneapolis, winners of the 2018 SEGD Achievement Awards were announced and celebrated at the largest annual gathering of members of the experiential graphic design community. Since 1987, SEGD has honored the individuals, companies and institutions whose work has significantly advanced the environmental and experiential graphic design fields. The 2018 honorees and awards and links to profiles on them are as follows.

2018 SEGD Fellow

Jane Davis Doggett

The SEGD Fellow Award recognizes an individual for promoting the highest values in environmental and/or experiential graphic design, and significantly contributing to the direction and growth of the field. SEGD Fellows are the laureates of environmental and/or experiential graphic design, whose body of work epitomizes the highest standards of practice in the field. SEGD Fellows include Jan Lorenc, Donald Meeker, Doug Morris, Chris Calori and David Vanden-Eynden, Wayne Hunt, Massimo Vignelli, Deborah Sussman and Robert Probst.

Jane Davis Doggett is a living legend of remarkable talent: both an unsung hero of graphic design  and a prolific artist in multiple mediums. Doggett designed wayfinding systems for 40 major airport projects, many of which are still in use today. She was also the first to use: color, letter and symbol coding; airport signing on approach highways to increase safety and reduce the number of signs as well as architectural and brand integrations of airport symbols. 

2018 SEGD Distinguished Member Award

Amy Lukas, Partner + Director of Events at Infinite Scale

The SEGD Distinguished Member Award recognizes an individual for demonstrating outstanding volunteer efforts while significantly contributing to the direction, growth and excellence of SEGD programs. Recipients of the award have been instrumental in cultivating university programs, advancing accessible and green design and promoting cultural agendas through design. Past winners include Kelly Kolar, Alexandra Wood and Lucy Holmes, Cybelle Jones, David Middleton, Wayne Hunt and Ken Ethridge.

Amy Lukas is the organizational leader and one of three founding partners at Infinite Scale, an award-winning sport design consultancy based in Salt Lake City, Utah, that specializes in making large and complicated events come to life. As an athlete herself, Lukas’ passion for sport is both personal and professional; she understands what it takes to inspire athletes to perform at their highest level and what it takes to create an engaging fan experience.

Lukas’ has been an involved and supportive SEGD member since 1998. She served the association as a member of the board for 10 years and as SEGD President from 2012–2013.

2018 SEGD Arrow Award

NanoLumens

The SEGD Arrow Award recognizes exemplary service or dedication to advancing technologies and manufacturing in experiential graphic design, and striving to provide the highest quality in products and services to the field. Recipients of the SEGD Arrow Award have advanced new manufacturing processes, led the development of innovative new products, and championed sustainable practices and materials. Past winners include SH Immersive Environments, 3M, Neiman & Company, CREO Industrial Arts, Matthews Paint and Nova Polymers.

Founded in 2006, Atlanta-based NanoLumens is synonymous with world-class innovation and quality in LED displays designed and assembled in the USA. They engineer and design ultra-slim, lightweight and flexible large format digital displays with one goal: break all the rules and enable creative professionals to forge new paths in digital media. The NanoLumens team of experts work with global clients in retail, transportation, gaming, higher education, stadiums and arenas, houses of worship and soon, cinema.

2018 SEGD Insight Award

Merlin Entertainments

The SEGD Insight Award recognizes entities that consistently commission environmental graphic design programs that significantly enhance or promote opportunities for the field and experiential graphic design education and demonstrate a long-standing commitment to recognize the field. Recipients of the award are the visionary design clients behind years of outstanding museum exhibits, innovative hospital wayfinding systems and rewarding partnerships between architects, developers and designers. Past winners include MD Anderson Cancer Center, Taubman, Portsmouth City Council, TATE, Apple, Amtrak, Herman Miller and the National Park Service.

Merlin Entertainments is the largest European entertainments company operating in Europe and the second largest entertainments company globally. Merlin runs 124 attractions in 25 countries across four continents, including 32 in North America. Their portfolio of attractions includes the world-famous Madame Tussauds, LEGOLAND® Parks, LEGOLAND® Discovery Centers, SEALIFE Aquariums and The San Francisco Dungeon. Their aim is to deliver unique, memorable and rewarding experiences to millions of visitors.

2018 SEGD Educator Award

Kristine Matthews, University of Washington

The SEGD Educator Award recognizes an individual for demonstrating innovation in the theory and practice of design education that not only integrates the needs of the industry but serves to advance the field. Recipients foster the development of the next generation of designers through creative and innovative curriculum as well as the promotion of forward thinking research and scholarship in the field. Kristine Matthews is the first winner of this award.

Kristine Matthews is an Associate Professor of Design and Chair of the Visual Communication Design program at the University of Washington in Seattle and owner and Principal of Studio Matthews. Dovetailing professional practice with education, her advanced exhibition design course creates cutting-edge design in the environment with a focus on audience engagement and sustainability.

2018 SEGD Chapter Chair Award

Nick Kapica, Wellington Chapter 

The SEGD Chapter Chair Award recognizes outstanding volunteer efforts while significantly contributing to the direction, growth, strength and excellence of SEGD Chapters both locally and throughout the organization. Nick Kapica is the first winner of this award.

Nick Kapica, Design Lead at the City of Wellington, is passionate about people, design and the urban environment. This is evident in his work since 2014 as a Chapter Chair for SEGD’s Wellington chapter, where he and Co-Chair Jo Bailey have organized many successful events, including two large international conferences, Off Grid 17 and Off Grid 18.

Congratulations to all of the 2018 SEGD Achievement award winners!

More information regarding the awards, past winners and the 2018 SEGD Achievement Awards recipients.

By Allan Haley, author, lecturer and expert on all things typographic

“They’re only fonts – why do they have to be so complicated?” Sound familiar? For many of us, font licensing is right up there with fractal equations and Bernoullian logic on the ease of understanding scale.

Font licensing can be especially complicated for experiential designers. Many of your projects call for fonts to be used in a variety of environments: on servers and the web, in applications, games, e-publications, kiosks and more. If you’re attempting to license fonts from a number of providers for an array of environments—you’ve got a situation that’s all frying pans and fires. Cobbling something together with free fonts may seem like the only answer. But it needn’t be—if you do a little homework.

Type First

Determine which typefaces you want to use from the outset—for two reasons. The first, is that you want to be sure the designs will perform well in their intended environments. A good typeface for large hardcopy applications may not be the best design for type imaged on a small screen. Additionally, compromises in choice may have to be made if the project calls for the same typeface in both environments.

The second reason is about availability and cost. While some fonts are available from a variety of providers (Proxima Nova is a good example), others, like Gotham, can only be licensed from one source. Some fonts also cost a lot more to license than others. Eight weights of Neue Helvetica run about $280 for a desktop license. Tex Gyre Heros, an open source font similar to Neue Helvetica, has no license fees for desktop—or any other use. OK, Neue Helvetica is a superior design to Tex Gyre Heros—both aesthetically and technically—but quality has its costs.

John Giardiniere, font license extraordinaire at Fontspring, has similar advice. “Designers should feel free to involve a font provider at an earlier stage, especially if they haven't purchased fonts before. Font licensing isn't that complicated, and we work hard to make it simpler, so just talking to someone who knows what to do can speed the process up considerably.”

Once you’ve determined what fonts you want to license, find out how much it will cost to take advantage of them for your project. Some web font licenses are one-time fees, while others are for a subscription service. Web fonts license fees will also vary depending on whether you purchase a “self-hosted” or “provider-hosted” license. Self-hosted web font licenses are normally a one-time fee, while provider-hosted licenses usually require a monthly or yearly fee based on how much traffic the site gets. If you are using fonts in an app, the fee can be a one-time charge of around $200 or a yearly subscription for the life of the app.

Avoid Surprises

Next, consider the whole project: now and—to the best you can determine—in the future. The project may start as simple back-lit wayfinding (about as easy as it gets, as far as font licensing goes), but if it expands to the web, kiosks and an app, things aren't so simple anymore.

Some font providers offer a suite of interrelated licenses that allow for simple and relatively painless growth in font uses. Others require a completely different license for each application of the font.

Christopher Slye, business manager at Adobe Type & Typekit, suggests doing a little research into license agreements before making your final choice for a font provider. “Take some time to find and read one or two foundry license agreements, with the goal of just getting better acquainted with how they’re written, and to get a better perspective on what you really need before approaching a foundry. I’d also recommend browsing foundry websites to get a sense of how pricing runs for different kinds of licenses. You won’t necessarily find a price for every kind of license but coming in with a realistic budget and expectations can make the process a lot easier.”

Giardiniere also offers some advice on avoiding surprises: “Many times, I find designers asking for too much or too little, and then completely changing their mind on what licenses they need once they talk to me. For example, often a company will ask for a ‘full buyout’ or an ‘all-inclusive enterprise license’ when really, they just need their 100 employees covered for all the documents they're creating.”

Shop Around

Many of your font orders will require human intervention. Take advantage of it. If you have flexibility in typeface choice or options in your license needs, let font providers know.

Try to limit your order to one font provider. You’ll, more than likely be getting consistent pricing and support rather than having to coordinate pricing and licensing guidelines that might vary significantly from one provider to another.

Look to expertise within the font provider company. It should be able to provide guidance and support regarding your needs. Need guidance on the best typefaces for both hardcopy and small screen reading, or for copy that must be read on the fly? Your font provider should have what it takes to help you out. Slye has similar advice: “Every foundry should be prepared to help a customer understand what licensing they really need, what they’ll get and just as important, what they will not get.”

When the Toner Hits the Wood pulp

To get some first-hand information, a number of font providers were contacted to provide a price quote for the following font order—two responded.

The Order

Two fonts from a brand name typeface family for 100 digital wayfinding kiosks. The kiosks would allow directional signage and directories to be updated to reflect changes to the layout of the facility. Each kiosk would have its own dedicated computer, but it would not be connected to any other imaging or printing device. The two fonts would also be embedded into a wayfinding app.

Adobe/Typekit  $1,050

Slye first provided the following information and caveats, “To be clear, the licensing described here would be for Adobe Type, not Typekit. The former is Adobe’s foundry, the latter is its subscription service. Also, I’d emphasize that this pricing is for a fictional example.

“The quote would be, for us, a custom license agreement, so the price could change after a conversation with further details. Furthermore, pricing changes over time, so this might be quite different, say, a year from now.

“Adobe would charge $455 per font for the kiosk use. By Adobe’s EULA terms, this is covered by a standard desktop license. Each kiosk is a computer or “license seat,” on which the fonts are being used—so the given price reflects 100 seats.

“To embed in a single wayfinding app, Adobe would charge $140 per font, per year. There would be no limit on the distribution of the app, i.e. on the number of users. The price might be different for more fonts, a multi-year contract, or other modifications.”

Font Spring  $1,200

Giardiniere explains, “We’ll use a $29 per weight because that's a pretty standard price for individual fonts. Base prices are important because our custom licenses scale based on that price.

“Generally, our OEM embedding licenses scale anywhere from 10-40 times the base price of a license. A license for just 100 kiosks is small, so we most likely would not go beyond a 10 times multiplier in that case, so $290 for each weight, or $580 total.

“App licenses are priced in two ways depending on the vendor. Some of our vendors use a per app cost, often at 10x the base price, so that's another $580 in this case. Other's go for a scaling price based on “monthly active users,” which scales from three to 40 times depending on the usage. So, an application expecting less than a hundred thousand monthly active users would be about $120, while a huge app with millions and millions of monthly active users, which required an unlimited usage license, would be $1200.

“So, depending on how the licenses are priced and what they buy, you're looking at about $1200 total for those two fonts for the OEM license and an app license for one app, or anywhere from $700-$1780 for an OEM license and corresponding app for an app license.”
 

OK, font licensing isn’t exactly simple. But, if you think about type first, shop around, and work with a font provider with depth of expertise, it doesn’t have to be on a par with fractal equations.

The people of Austin, Texas love their public library system—a lot. The city invested over $125 million and eight years into a new central location that spans 200,000 square feet of LEED Platinum-certified space. Local experiential graphic design firm fd2s was brought on to develop wayfinding and placemaking for the building designed by Lake Flato Architects and Shepley Bulfinch Architects.

Austin-based fd2s was the perfect choice for the new flagship library; the firm had a long and positive history working on projects with both Lake Flato and Shepley Bulfinch architects but, more importantly, had developed a set of sign standards for the Austin Library System in 2005 that had been deployed throughout the various branch locations. The new central library would replace one over 50 years old and its purpose was to be both a modern repository for information and education, and a multipurpose community center.

The striking building, in addition to retaining a 600-person event venue, art gallery, café and bookstore, bicycle corral, youth reading porch, “technology petting zoo,” rooftop butterfly garden and 373,000-gallon rainwater retention and filtering system, houses a vast collection of books, manuscripts and periodicals. The remarkable building is the only library in the United States to earn a LEED Platinum level of distinction for its sustainability.

While the neutral, practical standards fd2s had developed were perfect for the dozen or so architecturally diverse single-story suburban library branch locations served, they would require significant tweaking to accommodate the new six-story building, which can be accessed from multiple entry points and at different levels. “We were initially asked to apply these deliberately utilitarian distilled standards, but the building is multi-story, complex and has such a strong aesthetic that it required substantial growth of the system,” says fd2s Design Principal Curtis Roberts.

In keeping with the larger system, the wayfinding program is rendered in simple forms in a neutral palette; however, a judicious use of color provides quick recognition for various service kiosks throughout. The minimalist sign system was adapted for distance visibility and scale in a variety of mounting conditions throughout the facility and exterior applications, such as the lighted monolithic “library” lettering on the southwest corner and the literary quote-festooned scrim wrapping the northeast corner.

The fd2s design team’s scope included working closely with the architecture team early-on, assisting with nomenclature for entries, elevators, levels, departments and other key venues within the building—in addition to wayfinding, placemaking and donor recognition strategy and design. Roberts’ team performed significant research for the project, benchmarking numerous library facilities stateside and abroad to assess issues such as departmental and stacks identification, efficiency of patron-staff interactions and pervasiveness and prominence of wayfinding devices. Their research suggested that contemporary libraries experience a significant amount of change within their departments, which prompted signage designs that could readily accommodate updates.

The complexity of the circulation due to entry points on three sides and multiple levels required considerable mock-ups to vet the design. Patrons can arrive from the street level, parking garage or even local hike and bicycle trails via the “bike porch,” replete with valet. Because of these factors, the design team focused building orientation on parking levels and within the building on the elevator lobbies and identified entry points by landmarks instead of cardinal direction designations for ultimate ease of use.

Additional considerations were the decentralized customer service kiosks (Information, Reference, Look Up and Check-In/Check-Out) distributed throughout, a need for flexibility of stacks signage until late in the project, and a day-lit main atrium space with very few opportune surfaces for displaying wayfinding information. The design team’s solutions came in the form of pendant signage with custom identifying symbols and colors, and large dimensional letters placed on the floor and racks.

Over the course of the nine-year-long project, the community expressed widespread cynicism: Why should public monies be invested in an antiquated institution, which effectively could be replaced by the Internet? The Austin Central Library would be so much more—a source of hands-on educational opportunities, face-to-face exchanges of ideas and civic pride—dispelling the notion that libraries are an antiquated concept.

The public reaction to the project when it opened was remarkable; people were so pleased, they had seemingly forgotten the oft and publicly bemoaned fact that the building was both overdue and over budget. The project was well received by the architecture and design community as well: An AIA statement described the project as “a technologically rich hub for innovation and cultural intelligence.”

“Similar to trends in museum and exhibit design, where the goal is to move beyond artifacts-behind-glass to more immersive experiences, the design of this library invites discovery by offering media in a variety of forms and in an engaging array of spaces,” says Roberts. “The project wasn’t without challenges, but we are very proud of both our involvement and the outcome.”

Particularly, his team is proud of their contribution to clarity, as the wayfinding achieves the right balance of communication to demystify a large, programmatically complex environment—without losing an appropriate sense of discovery. They believe that the healthy dialogue they developed with the building staff and end users led directly to meeting the orientation and maintenance needs of the system.

Project Name: Austin Central Library
Client: City of Austin and Austin Public Library
Location: Austin, Texas
Open Date: October 28, 2017
Project Area: 200,000 sq ft
Overall Budget: $125,000,000
Experiential Graphics Budget: $350,000

Architect: Lake Flato Architects, Shepley Bulfinch Architects
Landscape Architect: Ten Eyck Landscape Architects

Wayfinding and Placemaking Design: fd2s, Inc.
Design Team: Ranulfo Ponce (senior designer), Curtis Roberts (design principal)
Fabrication: Capital Architectural Signs

Photos: Rachel Kay, Applebox Imaging

Read Time: 6 minutes

In this series, SEGD connects young designers with the design leaders they admire so they can ask their burning questions and find answers to help guide them on their career path. In this article, current North Carolina State University design studies major, Erin Delahunty, interviews Jason White, executive creative director at conceptual design studio Leviathan.

When thinking of potential designers to speak with, I was immediately drawn to the idea of large-scale installations that unite technology and design. From there, it took very little time to land upon the firm Leviathan, and its co-founder Jason White.

Jason White has been internationally renowned in his field since co-founding Leviathan in 2010 with Chad Hutson. Acting as executive creative director, Jason has consistently fused technological advancements with design in his work with clients from musical artists like Amon Tobin to large companies like BMW and Nike.

Personally, I am a young designer who is passionate about the power of design to change how people act, think and live. I am currently a design studies major at North Carolina State University with a concentration in business administration.

I thoroughly enjoyed speaking with Jason White; his expertise and passion for his field was evident throughout the conversation. I hope you enjoy reading this interview as much as I enjoyed compiling it.

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ED: Where does the name Leviathan come from and what significance does it hold?

JW: The short version is that the name implies an art movement. At the time, we really wanted to do something grand and different. Our logo represents the wild possibility of new technology and the line just above is that new technology trying to break free.

ED: For you, what is so important and enticing about the intersection of new media and traditional methods?

JW: I come from the fine arts world. My ambition has always been to take physical, tangible installations and combine them with digital media to create totally new experiences that people can touch, see and feel in the real world. We work with a lot of digital installations, but use familiar elements like buttons, dials and levers as means of interaction—as opposed to tapping on screens with your fingers.

ED: I think a great example of that is your work on Nike Test Stride.In an interview with SEGD, you mentioned your team faced some cultural barriers. What is your best advice for designing for a culture different from the designer’s own?

JW: We designed that installation in Chicago and had it fabricated in China. One thing to look out for is communication differences as little notions can get lost in translation. Working in different time zones can be frustrating; you often have to get up early and stay up late. In our case, we would jump on calls with China at the end of our work day. So that is something you have to be prepared for. Translation is a big part of it, too. When I was in China I absolutely needed a translator with me, and there wasn’t always one around. As a result, there was a lot of pointing at screens, drawing and trying to communicate.

ED: What is the Leviathan strategy for dealing with creative blocks?

JW: When you have a design challenge and don’t have the answer, I’ve always found it’s best to go for a walk or get some exercise. Go do non-design things to stimulate design thinking and usually the design answer will come to you. It's called default mode and it’s pretty fascinating how that works.

The other thing we do is user research. When we are troubleshooting a problem, say, with a big installation, we gather people for reviews and interview potential users. A good example would be a museum experience for children: We actually had to sit down with a bunch of kids and ask them what’s interesting to them, what they would like to see and use. Then we have them come to our studio and try to break the interactives, so we can see what works and what does not.

Lastly, nothing in our firm happens without teamwork. We constantly critique and review each other’s work so we can find the answers together.

ED: When building your team, what personalities do you look for?

JW: We look for passionate personalities, people that really have a passion for non-traditional formats and aren’t afraid of conceptual thinking. Most of what we do here is inventing the un-invented and the sort of personalities that thrive at Leviathan are those who embrace that ethos and really try to invent something that has never been done before.

ED: Technology changes so fast—how do you make sure the technology in your work stays relevant for users and clients?

JW: I feel good design transcends technology. We pay particular attention to cultivating and applying a high-end look, avoiding anything that appears too trendy.

ED: What have been your biggest hurdles in the design world?

JW: When I started out, I was working on projects I didn’t really care for because I needed the experience. Fast-forward twenty years: I find myself working with brands that I admire while creating meaningful art installations.

It took me a long time to get there; I had to build a portfolio that ascended to the level of the brands and partners that I wanted to speak to. We have just arrived at a place where we feel anything is possible with our portfolio.

ED: How can a young designer make their portfolio stand out?

JW: I can go on for days about this—crafting our portfolio is what I do for a living! My portfolio is similar to a student portfolio that gets reviewed by clients to determine whether or not they want to work with us. So how do I stand out from my competition?

The best advice I give to people is to be clear about who you are and what you want to do. I am hesitant to hire people that say they can do everything; I want to know what you do really well. And what you’re all about, too. Let your personality show through.

I very much like to see interviewees drawings and fine art, but I love to see process. On our website, you’ll see quite a bit of process, and behind the scenes. The more you can show me how you think, the more I can start to picture you on my team.

On your website, I would recommend showing your design thinking; show storyboards, show concept sketches. Write up a challenge and solution—what were you trying to fix or discover?

Additionally, make sure you photograph your work really well. If you can’t, have someone help you. Lastly, I would rather see a small handful of excellent projects that a whole lot of average projects.

ED: With the story being the most important?

JW:  Exactly. Then I can start to see where you might fit on my team. 

ED: What design books or blogs do you recommend?

JW: SEGD.org for sure. It’s probably my favorite and really is my go-to. Blog-wise, go to Creative Applicationswhere you’ll find plenty of new projects that merge art and tech.

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This interview was edited for length and clarity.

Read Time: 6 minutes

It’s amazing what can happen when a whole community rallies around a project. From high school students to state senators, a broad swath of citizens of the Upper Perkiomen Valley in Pennsylvania participated in the creation of a new regional wayfinding system with the help of CVE Design (New York).

As Chris Calori and David Vanden-Eynden, co-founders and principals of CVE Design, wound their way through the Upper Perkiomen Valley in a small silver car with New York plates, stopping to investigate decision points and points of interest, locals took notice. It was 2013, and their firm had been one of four invited to interview for a project for the chamber of commerce there, so they were taking notes and photos and gaining familiarity with the area in preparation.

The Upper Perkiomen (pronounced perk-E-O-men) Valley is a partially rural 36.22-square-mile area about 40 miles northwest of Philadelphia comprised of seven municipalities in two counties: Hereford, Marlborough and Upper Hanover Townships and the four Boroughs of East Greenville, Green Lane, Pennsburg and Red Hill. The area is home to agricultural ventures and various businesses like furniture-maker Knoll, inc., Blommer Chocolates and Stauffer Glove & Safety but was once known as a source of granite and for its cigar making businesses.

The plan to tie together and brand the area as one followed and built on the UPVCC “PerkUp” tourism and outdoor recreation initiative. In the “2011 Upper Perkiomen Valley Regional Comprehensive Plan,” community leaders posited that the addition of wayfinding signs would improve visibility of local recreational areas, attractions, amenities, nature preserves and cultural venues like the Goschenhoppen Folklife Museum and Schwenkfelder Library and Heritage Center, as well as play a role in economic revitalization of the area by drawing in visitors passing through the area en route to Philadelphia.

Luanne B. Stauffer, head of the UPVCC and Michele B. Fillippo, PerkUp project coordinator were the main organizers and points of contact for the CVE Design team, putting together a series of stakeholder and public outreach workshops and meetings through the UPV Regional Planning Commission, which was representative of each municipality. Management and signage consultant Craig Berger helped advise the effort from the beginning.

In the CVE Design-led workshops, Calori and Vanden-Eynden asked local government and business leaders and interested members of the community about the UPV and its history, their feelings about the region and what they wanted in a wayfinding and identity system. Clear patterns began to emerge, according to Vanden-Eynden, “There were a few words and ideas that were fundamental across all groups: the notion of combining historical, contemporary and natural references while cultivating an approachable, friendly feeling.”

“So many wayfinding systems tend to be historically themed, but this stakeholder group expressed a strong desire to not only look back on the past, but also forward to the future,” Calori remarks of the refreshing attitude of the group. “It was interesting for us to find a way to capture all of that.” After the design team presented options to the municipal representatives, a vote was held, and the design chosen was confirmed unanimously.

The CVE Design team developed a complete identity along with the wayfinding system consisting of a total of 79 signs: five major gateway monuments, five secondary gateway monuments, 13 village gateway signs, four parking directional and 52 wayfinding directional signs. The red and gray “rust and timber” color palette references rural, industrial and modern aspects of the area. Vanden-Eynden describes the vocabulary of form and color as simple, and purposeful in its representation of the past, present and future of UPV.

Typefaces the CVE Design team used for the project included DIN for the identity and Clearview for directional signing—the project began before the DOT rescission of conditional approval and ended after the rescission was rescinded. Atop all signs sits a disc enclosing the letters “UPV,” forming a logomark for the region, which has since been adopted by the UPVCC and serves as an emblem of community pride.

The initial design phase through concept design, took about nine months, with prototyping and bid packages taking close to another five. The longest part of the process, however, was the three years the project was on hold for fundraising. Despite herculean fundraising efforts on the part of Stauffer and her team, which yielded funding from businesses, grants and municipalities, the budgets were tight for design, consulting and fabrication. Portions of the design work became in-kind donations to the project.

Stauffer’s team cleverly handled the constraints by tackling small decisions on their own and further involving the community for support: They tapped the local technical high school, Western Montgomery Career & Technology Center, to create prototypes for the signage program. It was a win for students as well as businesses and individuals like Senator Bob Mensch, Knoll, Reed Sign Company and Horizon Signs, who contributed time and materials.

“The students learned a valuable lesson about transference of skills,” says Calori. Students welded and painted signs using techniques they had learned in autobody shop class and were instructed on how to apply vinyl lettering. Urban Sign Company of Vineland, N.J. helped with some of the heavier welding.

“To have this at the technical high school with the students, instructors, sign shop staff, state senators and all the representatives present was really touching,” remembers Vanden-Eynden, “and the students were just great!” One of the five full-sized prototypes the students made was deployed into the field to generate interest and enthusiasm for the project and help raise funds.

Once the funds were available for fabrication, the contract was split between more rural and urban wayfinding portions, with Urban Sign and MS Signs of Paterson, N.J. contributing respectively. The local sign shops declined to be involved in the final fabrication, citing their current project load and the complexity of government-funded project requirements. Fabrication went smoothly, with only one modification needed: sign faces needed to be shifted off-center of supports due to the narrow sidewalks in the townships and to avoid overhanging the street. The change was relatively easy, and the resulting aesthetic is more distinctive.

A ribbon-cutting ceremony for the UPV wayfinding and identity system was held on May 11, 2018 at St. Luke's Outpatient Center in Pennsburg, where one of the gateway monument signs stands. The celebration included remarks from 13 state and community leaders, including the Pennsylvania Secretary of Transportation, representatives from the Montgomery County Board of Commissioners members of PerkUp and the UPVCC, among others.

“This project took a village,” beams Calori. “We loved this project so much because of the people involved with it.” Vanden Eynden adds, “It gave us a wonderful opportunity to design at a scale you generally do not get in a municipal program and the opportunity to work with such a delightful and committed client and stakeholder group.”

Project Name: Upper Perkiomen Valley Wayfinding and Identity Program
Client: Upper Perkiomen Valley Chamber of Commerce/PerkUp Corporation
Location: Upper Perkiomen Valley, Penn.
Open Date: May 2018
Project Area: 1,009,755,648 sq ft
Wayfinding and Identity Design: CVE Design
Fabrication: Urban Sign Company, MS Signs, Inc.,
Other Collaborators: Craig Berger Management Consulting; Western Montgomery Career & Technology Center (faculty and students); Reed Sign Company, LLC; Horizon Signs, LLC; Knoll, Inc., Montgomery County Planning Commission, Pennsylvania State Senator Bob Mensch, Montgomery County Parks and Heritage Services, Upper Perkiomen School District
Project budget: $452,000
Photos: CVE Design

Read Time: 7 minutes

The exhibition was a joint project between Kristine Matthews’ Exhibition Design class at the University of Washington and her professional design studio, Studio Matthews (Seattle).

By Kristine Matthews

The Project

The University of Washington’s Office of Minority Affairs & Diversity was born in May 1968 after members of the Black Student Union and their supporters occupied the office of UW President Charles Odegaard, demanding greater diversity in the UW’s student body, staff and faculty. This iconic student protest led the UW to create one of the nation’s first office of minority affairs, which celebrated its 50th anniversary this spring.

Late last year, OMA&D approached Studio Matthews to design an exhibition to celebrate this cultural milestone. The exhibit was planned for a large atrium in Allen Library North on the University’s Seattle campus.

In spite of the tight timeline, I thought it would be a great project to integrate into my Exhibition & Installation Design class, which I teach each winter quarter to the University of Washington Design seniors. I proposed this approach to Jeanette James and Leilani Lewis at OMA&D, the organizers of the exhibit. They were very excited about the prospect of involving UW students in the work, as current students were the primary target audience they wanted to inspire. 

Furthermore, I thought it would be a great chance for design students to realize how an exhibition project evolves from a concept on paper to a real, built experience—and one that would be on public display on campus during their graduation. The Studio Matthews team was excited to work together with and mentor the design students and seized the opportunity to “give back” to the community. 

The Class

We kicked off the project in class by inviting in Jeanette, Leilani and most importantly, Emile Pitre, a founding member of the UW Black Student Union and a key participant in the 1968 protest and events featured in the exhibit. Emile spoke directly to the students about the events of 50 years ago that led to major transformations in UW policies on discrimination and equity. His words were clearly an inspiration in their design concepts. At this time we were given a timeline and set of historic and current photos, setting out the history of the OMA&D.

A mix of Visual Communication Design students, Industrial Design students, and Interaction Design students, the class worked out concepts together in mixed teams of three to four. They developed design concepts for a month, with input from the Studio Matthews design team—Matt Cole, Ian Campbell and Nicole Fischetti—a key part of the process.

The work needed to address some of the very real restrictions of the Allen Library environment, for example, nothing could hang from the walls, ceiling or be adhered to the floor. The students started by visiting the site, looking at different vantage points and approaches. They considered their audience—UW students, staff, faculty and visitors—and asked themselves: “What would interest me? What would get my attention and pull me in to see and read more?”

The Industrial Design students brought the most experience and know-how with materials and construction techniques, though most of their previous projects focused on product design rather than built structures. I advised the teams to initially set aside questions about fabrication (“How would this get built?” “Would this be able to stand up on its own?”) and instead concentrate on coming up with a wide range of concepts.

The Process

Their creative development lasted four weeks from start to finish and was punctuated by two all-class pin-up charrettes. Ian, Nicole and Matt joined me for critiques and team work sessions, providing feedback on concepts, compositions and practicalities.    

The first crit required at least two significantly different sketched concepts by each team. Teams experimented with both physical forms and with story content, exploring how it could be effectively organized or themed.

I was pleased with the wide range of ideas, from a newsstand complete with traditionally printed newspapers, to a winding, dramatic table top displaying a narrative that “invited everyone to the table,” to a series of walls to be metaphorically (or perhaps even literally) broken down through the course of the exhibition. One intriguing idea featured a large set of chairs, each of which represented one of the sit-in protestors from 1968. The chairs were arranged into unexpected configurations, almost as data points, to illustrate different parts of the historic narrative.

At the end of four weeks, all teams presented their final concepts to a team from OMA&D, including Jeanette, Leilani, Emile as well as Rickey Hall, vice president. The OMA&D team were inspired to see the wide range of concepts and were extremely impressed by the student work. They reported having a difficult time choosing any one concept to develop because they “loved them all.”

I worked alongside my design team at Studio Matthews to consider how some of the best ideas could be pulled together into a workable and functional exhibit that could also be built for the fabrication budget. (Studio Matthews developed the project almost entirely pro bono, in order to put the majority of the budget towards fabrication.)

One student team that included Christen Miyasato, Monica Niehaus, Angela Piccolo and Samantha Spaeth had cleverly batched the exhibition content into themes that tied to the five demands made during the 1968 occupation of the UW president's office. Their concept was named “Tearing Down & Building Up.” Another concept, “Celebrate/Absorb/Reflect” by Dana Golan, Eva Grate and Jazmine Hoyle proposed a very effective dimensional design to activate what was otherwise very flat content. These two concepts provided the inspiration for the final design solution developed by the Studio Matthews team.

The Build

Cole led the effort to develop the final design solution. The five walls concept was expanded into 3-D framework structures. This approach allowed each “wall” to be freestanding and also provided an opportunity to affix imagery and text on different layers, creating a dynamic dimensionality similar to the student concept, “Celebrate/Absorb/Reflect.”

For fabrication, we partnered with Imagine Visual Services, with whom we’ve worked on many projects previously. Although Imagine typically handles more flat graphics than built structures, after talking through the design concept they agreed they could take on the whole thing: printing, fabrication and installation. This was a lifesaver with the tight budget because, although we had to cut out one interaction-focused structure and reduce the introductory structure by half, the result felt right-sized and very dynamic in the space.

The original student concept featured a very rough compressed particle board and though we investigated using the same material for the final installation, after discussing it with the client, we went with a more refined look and feel. Using a finer particle board also allowed successful direct printing to the material.

Direct printing meant we could avoid using PVC or other plastic-based graphics or films. Direct-printed MDF was used for all of the smaller panels, with stenciled titles and selected CNC-cut silhouette shapes. With exposed hardware fasteners and an open, “raw” framework, we embraced the student-suggested theme of honest construction.

The structures were test-assembled at Imagine, then disassembled and brought to the Allen Library for efficient assembly on-site with minimum disruption to staff and students. Simple sand bags were added for extra stability, then covered with a natural burlap to tie in to the look and feel of the rest of the construction. 

The Exhibit

The OMA&D team and Emile Pitre were thrilled with the final result. It was wonderful to see the design students witness the very real impact of their concepts and to see their ideas produced on a scale they could actually walk through! Thousands of students, staff and faculty saw the exhibit in its prominent location at the Allen Library during graduation festivities, May 1 through June 15, 2018.

To extend its public display, the exhibit was moved to nearby Mary Gates Hall, home of the Office of Minority Affairs & Diversity.

Read more about OMA&D and its 50-year anniversary

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Kristine Matthewsis the associate professor of design and chair of the Visual Communication Design program at the University of Washington in Seattle and owner + principal of Studio Matthews.

Read Time: 7.5 minutes

Through the creative use of technology, multidisciplinary agency Lorem Ipsum Corp. (New York) captured the spirit of the Don Cossacks and Count Matvei Ivanovich Platov in a host of interactive and experiential installations at the new airport in Rostov-On-Don, Russia.

In anticipation of the 2018 World Cup being held in Russia, many infrastructure projects were undertaken, including the erection of an entirely new airport by Airports of Regions group in Rostov-On-Don. The over-530,000-square-foot facility was named Platov International Airport after Cossack leader Count Matvei Ivanovich Platov.

Platov, who lived in the second half of the 18th through the early 19th century, was a Russian military General who commanded the Don Cossacks in the Napoleonic wars and founded Novocherkassk as the new capital of the Don Host Province.1 The Cossacks, a semi-military and self-governed ethnic group, played an important role in the cultural development of Russia and Ukraine, protecting and patrolling borderlands on the steppes and serving in the Russian military in conflicts through WWII. Today, between 3.5 and 5 million people worldwide self-identify as Cossack.2

Lorem Ipsum Corp., an agency with offices in New York, London and Moscow, started out in video production and has grown to encompass a plethora of creative capabilities from branding and graphic design to augmented and virtual reality—all with a focus on storytelling. Lorem Ipsum was approached by client Airports of Regions in mid 2017 with a mission uniquely suited to their skills: Tell the story of Platov and the Cossacks with a cutting-edge, media-driven approach fitting for the brand-new, technologically-advanced space­—and complete the work in five months in time for the airport’s December opening. They needed to find a way to combine the aesthetics of today with that of centuries past to create a cohesive environment, without stripping either of its integrity.

Because of the firm’s background in production, generous in-house resources, like-minded fabrication partner and satellite office in Moscow, the project was able to get off the ground quickly. A total of 55 staff from architects to CGI artists worked on the five-month-long project, with half of them solely dedicating their time to it. Partner Abigail Honor attributes the success of the project to the firm’s ability to mobilize their large and multitalented team quickly—and a little bit of good luck. “Even with a great team like ours, the turnaround for this project was unheard of, but we did it,” she laughs, admitting that several sleepless nights were a part of the process. They brought in trusted fabrication partner Miras Group to help with the speedy execution.

The challenges of the project weren’t limited to timing, though. The team needed to consider the great scale of the new space, the heavy traffic, the international audience and where, if and for how long people would stop to interact with an installation, in addition to using the exact right amount of historical information to tell the story and pay homage to different aspects of Don Cossack culture. Lorem Ipsum dispatched their team of researchers to delve into the life of Platov and the long history of the Cossacks—their goal was to keep the history light and interesting and deliver it in a way that would be easy to understand with minimal text, with the potential for viewers to choose to dig more deeply.

This particular goal led to the creation of oversized portraits of Platov and Field Marshall Mikhail Kutuzov. At a closer distance, viewers can see the portraits are composed from smaller words and letters, which build upon one another to tell the story of Platov and Kutuzov. The portraits were digitally printed on four panels of 3m Scotchcal Clear View Graphic Film 8150 each, which after much testing was the best material for perfect transparency when applied to windows. The material was difficult to source in rolls, but more trying than the sourcing was the application— the panels needed to go up without dust or air bubbles, which proved to be an unexpected challenge to navigate because the airport was still being built.

Construction dust played a much smaller role in the installation of the Don River, a 35-foot-long LED screen manufactured by Miras Group, showing an 8K resolution, three-minute-long, custom drone-shot aerial film that follows the river from its beginning in Novomoskovsk to the Sea of Azov, inspired by footage of the Thames shown during the London Olympic games. The river was chosen as the subject of an installation because of its central role in the development of civilization and Cossack culture in the region. The Don also inspired the design and aesthetic of the airport itself. The screen showing the film is at a crucial juncture at the top of the escalators between the check-in area and security checkpoints, where travelers can get an impression of the river with a glance or watch the entire film during their journey upstairs.

Inside security, visitors can indulge in viewing a rare treat— “Animated Battlefield,” an animated canvas interactive. The 24-foot-long Photoshop-created “painting” was derived from a series of 19th-century works of art and depicts a symbolic battle between the Russian and the French troops during the Napoleonic Wars in 1812, with the Cossack forces taking charge. When seen through a pair of electronic viewfinders, parts of the painting become animated and show the heat of battle with horses bucking, swords flying and dust whirling. “The viewfinders look like the ones you might see on an observation deck, but inside are equipped much like a VR headset,” explains Chris Cooper, partner at Lorem Ipsum. “The media is stored on BrightSign players and can be triggered to play with the touch of a button.” The effect is delightful and brings the concept of a battlefield painting firmly into the present day.

Another deft way the Lorem Ipsum team brought the Cossack history to life in Platov International was through the development of a large-scale, two-part interactive centered on historical garments. “Through our intense research we found one of the well-documented facets of Cossack culture was the clothing,” Honor remarks. “We tried to keep the language very simple and keep it more of an emotional narrative because of the non-Russian audience present in an airport setting.” The interactive was built in two parts: a 3-D rendering depicting how Cossack uniforms evolved as the army became more organized and an interface where visitors can take a selfie to virtually “try-on” outfits from various eras.

The grandest gesture by the Lorem Ipsum team takes the form of a huge ring 90-feet in circumference. The perforated exterior echoes the surrounding shopping area of the terminal. The interior of the ring houses a 360-degree LED screen playing the “Cossack Spirit” film. Airports of Regions had requested an activation in this opening inside a circle of shops, in which Honor says a circular installation “only felt natural—a T or cross shape would break the flow of foot traffic.”

Cossack Spirit, shot and produced by Lorem Ipsum, introduces viewers to the Don Cossack people and their traditional methods of travel and fighting, effectively conveying a feeling of riding through the Eurasian Steppe on horseback. The location and shoots were challenging, requiring extensive planning, complicated equipment, treacherous travel on foot or horseback and good weather. Thankfully, the four-day shoot went without a hitch, the most difficult part being finding pristine locations (without evidence of the 19th, 20th or 21st century).

In-situ, the high-definition images appear as one in the round but are actually two to three shots filmed with a single camera, then stitched together. The stitching was critical to the effect and to achieving slow-motion shots of the horses. The team did research and analysis into how people watch films to determine the best way to play the narrative to encourage viewing from all perspectives—like using a giant VR headset. Beyond the rigorous production, the fabrication and installation teams had their own set of hurdles to jump: cathedral ceilings, changing light, hard floors, floor-to-ceiling windows, a pervasive PA system and incomplete construction. “These are interesting challenges to overcome,” muses Cooper. “A lot of testing was done on site as a result.” The team was also working with eight rounded speakers that required tweaking to eliminate transfers, echoes and reverb.

The result of Lorem Ipsum Corp.’s efforts is nothing short of astonishing; the agency was able to determine the message and provide solutions in innovative and original formats tailored to the scale and space in the span of a mere five months. The team believes, though, the most important accomplishment of the project is the impact it has on the region and those who visit in understanding Rostov-On-Don’s cultural history.

Project Name: Platov and His Time
Client: Airports of Regions
Location: Rostov-on-Don, Russia
Open Date: December 2017
Project Area: 2,153 sq ft
Experiential Graphic Design Budget: $250,000
Experiential Graphic Design: Lorem Ipsum Corp.
Design Team: Abigail Honor, Yan Vizinberg, Chris Cooper (partners); Masha Pyshkina (senior producer); Adrian Castiniera (architect); Pasha Erko, Henri Baghumyan, Alex Robete (designers); Gevorg (software developer)
Fabrication/Digital Integration: Miras Group
Collaborators: Abby Sanchez
Photos: Rinat Maksutov (courtesy of Regional Airports)

Sources:

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matvei_Platov
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cossacks

Read Time: 4.5 minutes

Audio technology and compression specialists, Dolby Laboratories (San Francisco) commissioned specialized creative agency Leviathan (Chicago), to create digital artwork for their newly renovated public gallery space.

Dolby Labs, most famous for its surround sound technologies, has been operating at the nexus of science and art for over five decades. Their team includes engineers, technologists and neuroscientists who find new ways to enhance and expand the sensory experience of digital audio and visual content—namely music and cinema arts—from movie theaters to consumer devices.

Because of this longstanding relationship and commitment to the arts, the company felt the artwork within its offices should reflect its business ethos and inspire employees, partners and visitors; thus, the Dolby Art Program was born. Dolby began to commission and collaborate with artists from around the world, starting with a series of brand-inspired works that led to the new, open-to-the-public Dolby Gallery. “It was natural for a company that enables artistry through technology to engage with creators to deliver that exceptional sensory experience through their art,” Vince Voron, current vice president and executive creative director at Dolby Laboratories and Apple and Coca-Cola design veteran told sfdesignweek.org. “This latest series [in Dolby Gallery] will help us scale the art program to Dolby’s office locations worldwide.”

Because of Leviathan’s reputation as both artists and experiential designers, Dolby was expressly interested in working with them to create a piece of digital artwork that could both span the Dolby Gallery setup—a built-in Orchid 1.9 mm pixel pitch, 62-foot-long, L-shaped SiliconCore LED display and 52-channel surround-sound Dolby Atmos audio system, which includes a whopping 34 subwoofers—and be distributed with consumer devices that feature Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision technology as part of a demo mode. The requests made of the design team were generous in terms of time and relatively open-ended: They were given the size and resolution of the two formats and were asked to create art with a narrative that ties to Dolby’s technology and the Gallery itself, inside of a nine-month timeframe.

After having a few initial technical questions answered by the client’s engineering staff about how they work with color and sound, the Leviathan team set to work. “The engineers explained how Dolby translates color into data and how they use algorithms to work with that data,” recalls Chad Hutson, co-founder and president of Leviathan. “So, we were thinking of the richness of color as data points, and wanted to visualize it as a volume, a mass.”

This led to a realization that color data could be sampled from anything to create art—including existing art. It could even be a way to explore masterworks in a decidedly new way through data visualization. The concept was a thrill for Leviathan Executive Creative Director Jason White and Senior Creative Director Bradon Webb, who both have backgrounds in fine arts. White says the data used for “Metamorphosis”  comes from masterpieces of the last century—famous works from Van Gogh, Picasso, Seurat, and Monet, for example. From those works, they looked for vibrancies of color to translate into three-dimensional form set into motion.

The team tried various software platforms—Maya, Cinema 4D and Houdini—before settling on TouchDesigner because of its ease of use and virtual mockup capabilities, which were especially helpful in considering the work for both a 16:9 consumer screen and the Gallery’s extra-wide canvas. The team went with a generative approach, bringing in composer Joel Corliss of Waveplant to create the dynamic audioscape that is “played” by the visuals by assigning specific tones to color values. To achieve the desired aesthetic, the generative parameters were finessed and refined by Webb and the Leviathan team; the resultant vibrant, hair-like representations of the data come from a stretching and morphing of points that occurs with manipulation of the virtual camera in 3-D.

Due to the fairly open timeline and parameters and the team’s unbridled enthusiasm for the project, the biggest challenge was exercising efficiency and restraint with time and resources. The scope quickly narrowed from a full interactive to live-generative installation and finally to a curated selection of generative sequences on a ten-minute loop. “At times, so much freedom can be paralyzing for artists and designers,” Hutson asserts. “We began to overthink it and had to remind ourselves to keep the theme simple and the execution efficient, so it is just beautiful and showcases the technology—end of story.”

Dolby engineers executed the final mix for “Metamorphosis,” optimizing the color and audio for the space using Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision technology to bring the immersive experience to life. The client team was so taken with the final result and internal buzz about it, they decided to debut the work during San Francisco Design Week, amplifying the excitement.

For viewers, the piece was meditative, mesmerizing and synergistic, but for the Leviathan team, it was plainly a rewarding experience. The firm actively fosters appreciation for the arts within their staff, purposefully balancing opportunities to do commercial with artistic or educational work.

“We truly feel that doing art can teach us a lot and absolutely positively influences our commercial work,” states Hutson.

Project Name: Dolby Gallery “Metamorphosis”
Client: Dolby Laboratories
Location: San Francisco
Open Date: June 2018
Project Area: 186 sq ft
Digital Experience Content Design: Leviathan Design
Design Team: Bradon Webb (senior creative director, visual artist, programmer); Bill Galusha (senior producer); Brittany Maddock (producer); Adam Berg (technical director); David Braun (software engineer); Andrew Butterworth, Anthony Malagutti (look development, 3D); Kirill Mazor (editorial); Chad Hutson (executive producer); Jason White (executive creative director)
Collaborators: Waveplant (sound design)
Photography/Videography: Leviathan Design

Read Time: 8 minutes

In this series, SEGD connects young designers with the design leaders they admire so they can ask their burning questions and find answers to help guide them on their career path. In this article, current University of Cincinnati DAAP student Mariel Lustig interviews Michael Bierut, partner at Pentagram (New York).

Last November, Mariel Lustigwas one of ten students at the University of Cincinnati who received a free SEGD membership thanks to the generous donations of local members. When the call went out inviting young designers to conduct interviews with leaders in the design community whom they admired, she instantly knew she wanted to interview Pentagram Partner Michael Bierut—an alum of her school.

 “I'm a student at the University of Cincinnati, working towards a bachelor’s degree in communication design,” Lustig writes. “I'm also participating in the Professional Practice Program, alternating semesters of study with work in the field of graphic design. Through my first co-op experience I have become passionate about experiential graphic design. I aspire to use visual communication to connect people to their environments and help brands tell their unique story.”

Michael Bierutis a well-known and accomplished leader of the graphic design world. He has won hundreds of awards for graphic design, served as National President of AIGA for four years, co-founded the popular Design Observer blog, received the AIGA Medal and was inducted into Art Directors Club Hall of Fame in addition to his work being displayed in museums around the world. He is also known as an educator, astute critic and author of three books on design.

Lustig described the interview as “the coolest thing I’ve ever done!!!!” We hope you enjoy it as well.

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ML: When you were in school, what did you imagine life would be like as a designer?

MB: When I entered the University of Cincinnati DAA (they didn’t have the ‘planning’ part until after I graduated), it was really exciting to study and be surrounded by graphic design students and professors. But I was impatient to work, which is why the co-op program was so great: You get put in a workplace right away.

I had a couple of jobs that were not so great, and the experience made me even wonder if maybe what I was picturing [a career in design] wasn't to be, but then I got a job in Boston at the public television station there, WGBH. They had a fantastic design department that supported all of the educational programing that they did and all of the designers there were vivid, exciting characters. Many of them either came out of teaching, or went on to teaching careers, so they were almost perfectly suited to deal with a co-op student.

That experience gave me the courage to move to New York, which in the 70s was—if you were ambitious and willing to travel—one of the few places in the U.S. that seemed to have a real graphic design community.

It came out better than I could have expected; my dreams ended up coming true.

ML: What do you do when you need inspiration or find yourself stuck?

MB: The typical answers to this question are: ‘go to a museum,’ ‘listen to music’ or ‘take your mind off of it.’ All of those things sort of work. I usually find if I’m at a dead end, it’s because I’ve gotten too wrapped up in refining a graphic solution instead of working the problem itself. So, I stop trying to answer the question, and go back and try to think about the question in a new way.

ML: What designers inspire you and your everyday work?

MB: I'm inspired by lots and lots of different designers.

I've been really fortunate in the course of my career to work for some really talented people. I’ve taken important and inspirational lessons from designers I worked with as a student and early in my career—Chris Pullman, Dan Bittman and, of course, Massimo Vignelli. At Pentagram, there are 21 partners in our four offices around the world, all of whom are amazing designers, all of whom do work that I find really inspiring and interesting.

I really have been lucky to have worked over four decades or so in different contexts where I've gotten to see work done in a lot of ways. And that inspires me most of all.

ML: What was your first large scale environmental graphics project and what did you learn from it?

MB: I learned that the pace is worth the payoff.

When I started working for Vignelli, I thought EGD was boring because it seemed administration heavy and seemed to take forever compared to doing something simpler like a book cover or an illustration.

When I first started at Pentagram, I did a project for the Minnesota Children's Museum—it was a beautiful new building and the organization had a visionary director—and we came up with something really different. But because it was in St. Paul, I didn't get to see it going up day to day.

I still remember going out there late in the process, right after the install of a really large-scale graphic on one of the façades; I approached the building from the rear, turned the corner and for the first time saw something that, up until that moment, had only been a drawing, perhaps 24 inches wide.

And there it was. It seemed like it was two city blocks wide and three stories tall! I still remember screaming with joy.

ML: How do you continue to incorporate what you learned from Massimo Vignelli into your work today?

MB: The most inspiring thing about Massimo was that within the first year I was working there, he'd already had a nearly 30-year career, but he was still able to approach every job with real energy and enthusiasm—almost as if he had never done it before.

Preserving that sense of enthusiasm and curiosity and capacity to surprise yourself is a real gift. Massimo was optimistic and idealistic. He viewed things that others would view negatively as a challenge to do something really exciting, to surpass what the client’s vision of the project was. That is something I've really carried with me.

ML: What is your favorite part of a recent project?

MB: A few weeks ago, I was part of a presentation that we did to a new client for a new project.

On most projects, I’ll pick one of the designers on my team, depending on the situation, and make them be the lead designer for the project. This time, it was one of the newest designers on my team who is just a couple of years out of school and a former intern at Pentagram. It would be her first time leading on a project.

We took the brief for this project from the client, sat down and talked about it. She showed me some of her ideas for it and I had a couple of suggestions in response. After, she just went off and found her own voice; she came back with four complete directions she had worked out, all based on things we had discussed very loosely. It was just so exciting to see her come to that moment of ‘hey, I can do this.’ Then, the two of us worked on the presentation for the client, who loved it.

Now, this is something my designer will be able to follow through and see fully realized. It reminds me of the first time that happened to me 35 years ago, just about when I was a junior designer working for Vignelli. I was working on a project and had an idea for it, and he said, ‘okay, why don’t you just carry this out and we will see if it works.’

It’s a great experience to enable that moment for a young designer.

ML: How can a young designer stand out when looking for a job?

MB: The last time I looked for a job was in 1990. I remember it was exciting to get an interview someplace, or just drop off and pick up my portfolio and see what the reception area [of different firms] looked like. I saw it as a big and exciting adventure.

The first thing I recommend is: Be enthusiastic and open-minded to considering a lot of places. Look broadly into firms or companies whose work you think is exciting and inspiring—those will be the places that will help you grow the most.

Use every connection you can think of. When I got my job with Vignelli, it started with a guy I had worked with, who told me to look up his ex-classmate in New York who worked there. At that point, I wasn’t thinking, ‘if only I can talk to Massimo Vignelli, it will change my life.’ One connection will lead to the next and if you’re enthusiastic about making those connections, you’ll have lots of them.

Make sure that the work you show people is all stuff that you are really proud of, is your best work and somehow expresses the things that you’re interested in personally. That’s really what employers want to see. They want to get a sense of who they are hiring and how that person thinks and what they care about, not just if they have the skills that qualify them. Those things should come through in your portfolio as much as your ability to kern type or to resolve a layout or code a website.

Also, be really gracious and respect people's time. You getting a job is the most important thing for you, but them hiring you may not be their priority. Remember everyone is busy and everyone has their own lives. I think that this would apply no matter where you are you going.

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This interview was edited for length and clarity.

Read Time: 4 minutes

Type creates memorability, entices audiences, commands attention and enlightens the reader. But simply engaging and informing audiences is no longer enough. Type is now being called on to envelop them. This expanded view of typography embraces a wide range of disciplines including graphic, interactive, architectural, interior, landscape and industrial design—sometimes all at the same time. This may mean some changes to the fonts we use.

By Allan Haley, author, lecturer and expert on all things typographic

Digital is not Print

The problem is that most of the typefaces we use were designed for print—not the other aspects of experiential design. If you take on just about any kind of non-print project, textual fidelity and typographic legibility can be compromised by not choosing the correct fonts. The most far reaching are on-screen applications: everything from big screens for wayfinding to the tiny screens of wearables.

Finding the Best Fonts

So how do you identify the best typefaces and fonts for these projects? First, it’s important to understand how we read. It’s not about individual words. We scan a line, pausing momentarily to record groups of three or four words —and then jump to another group of three or four words. Since we do not look at individual letters or words, they must be discernible at a glance. Anything that gets in the way of this slows down the process. As a result, type design subtleties don't have much of a place in on-screen typography. Think big, obvious and simple.

What to Look For

The best typeface for digital imaging, regardless of the application, should have the following attributes:

• A large lowercase x-height, especially where screen real estate and available pixels are limited. Since most of the letters we read are lowercase, the larger they are in proportion to the caps, the easier they are to discern.

• Open counters, the white space within letters such as o, e, c, etc., help to define a character and influence recognition. Small counters can fill in and distort characters on digital screens.

• Generous apertures, which are the openings between a counter and the outside of a character in letters like the e, s and C. If they are not sufficiently open, they can easily fill in, turning c’s into o’s and making other characters less than crystal clear.

• Individual letter shapes can also affect typeface legibility. For example, the two-storied a is much more legible than the single-storied design and the bowl-and-loop g is easier to identify than the bowl and hook variety.

• Moderate contrast in character stroke thickness. Typefaces with strong contrast in character stroke weights do not image accurately in many digital environments. In addition, if pixels are at a premium, as they are on small screens, hairlines can disappear or become too heavy.

• Marked contrast between medium and bold weights within the type family. Many typefaces designed for print have subtle weight graduations. If typeface weights are too close to each other, the medium and bold weights of a typeface family may be hard to differentiate when seen on screen.

• Generous inter-character spacing ensures even typographic color and reading ease at small sizes and low resolutions. If there is not sufficient spacing, an r and n can look like an m and o and an l like a d. Also, the white space around letters helps to define them.

Multiple Environment Performers

While initially drawn for print, there are many traditional designs that perform exceptionally well in interactive environments. You just need to consider the design’s attributes. Neue Frutiger, for example, is a terrific performer in these kinds of design projects—far better than Neue Helvetica. Classic Grotesque, Egyptian Slate, Soho and Soho Gothic are also great performers on screen. There are hundreds of others; they just might not be the usual suspects.

Specialized Designs

In addition, some traditional print typeface designs have been modified to optimize their imaging at small sizes in digital environments. For example, counters may be slightly expanded to retain their character even in small point sizes. Also, stroke thickness may be discreetly increased and x-height carefully adjusted. Often glyph spacing and kerning is also modified. Font Bureau calls their optimized fonts “Reading Edge” designs, while Hoefler & Co. refers to its designs as “ScreenSmart” and Monotype calls its designs “eText” fonts.

There also a growing number of typefaces that have been designed specifically for on-screen imaging. FF Nort, Burlingame, Felbridge and PMN Caecilia Sans were all designed from the get-go to be powerful interactive performers.

Experiential designers are on the leading edge of typography’s future. You are dealing with all aspects of communicating with type. Just remember: The first rule is “Type First” and the second is “Choose Wisely.”

Read Time: 15 minutes

 Titled “Desire by Design,” a new book out this month by Jean-Pierre Lacroix of Shikatani Lacroix (Toronto) examines how desire shapes decisions and the role that design can have in the process, offering interesting history, insights from scientific research and actionable advice.

Jean-Pierre Lacroix, an author, speaker and co-founder of Shikatani Lacroix Design, has been a leader in the design and branding industry for the past 35 years. His industry involvement is diverse; he has served as a board member for organizations such as the Packaging Association of Canada, Registered Graphic Designers of Ontario, Society for Experiential Design, Identity Conference and Design Industry Advisory Committee. Desire by Design is his third book; he previously co-authored “The Business of Graphic Design” and “The Belonging Experience: How Brands Connect with Consumers.”

In Desire by Design, Lacroix unravels the irrational element of desire and explains how brands, designers, and marketers can tap into the emotional high that elicits such passion for certain brands. Using the design philosophy he has developed through his 35 years of experience, Lacroix offers high-level ideas and insights from neuroscience, cult fanaticism and behavioral psychology into practical worksheets that explain the “how-to” in creating desire for a brand.

Lacroix answers some key questions about the book:

What was the inspiration for this book?

I was inspired to write Desire by Design because of our amazing clients and award-winning work.  I wanted to leverage my expertise, and make a practical book for clients, designers, and all brand marketers. Throughout my career, the industry has seen many changes and it’s not enough to just be a marketer or a designer anymore. You need to understand your target audience, meet them on their terms and exceed expectations.

What drives desire for brands?

Retail stickiness drives desire for brands. Retail brands must go beyond selling commodities to uniquely developing branded experiences that support a sense of belonging–regardless of if it’s online, mobile or in a network of stores. To truly drive desire, brands must stimulate all of the senses. This provides both an opportunity and a challenge for brands, as you must ensure the omni-experience model aligns the needs of both the brand and the customer, while the path-to-purchase considers the journey and key channels to meet those needs.

How has your career influenced the book?

I have been working in the branding and design industry for over 30 years. At Shikatani Lacroix and SLDNXT we are committed to helping brands own the consumers’ “at-purchase moment” and truly revolutionize their retail transformation. I think my career, and my board member has allowed me to have a diverse career and well-rounded perspective on global branding.

I really enjoy reading and learning from other thought leaders in the industry. So, it was just a matter of time before I decided to write my own book. I’ve always wanted to be a published author, and I did it, twice! My first book, Belonging Experiences: Designing Engaged Brands, focused on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and how he got it wrong. It’s definitely a shorter book in comparison. This book is definitely more practical with entire “How-to” section with worksheets, that people can bring back, and use at their offices.

What do you hope readers take away from “Design by Desire?”

This book is geared towards marketers and designers. But most importantly, those that are looking to make a major change in their company. It’s for those that are not satisfied with status quo, and want to really elevate their brand, brand design, and brand experience.

After reading this book, I hope people realize that artificial intelligence and all technological advances may help with some situations within the various customer touchpoints, but it can never replace the human connection and interaction consumers want and need.

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Design by Desire

Excerpt from Chapter Nine: Right Experiences Drive Desire

The Dimensions of a Brand Experience

The Jack Morton study reinforces why companies with high-demand brands such as Apple’s, and those that have brands such as Dove and Axe in highly commoditized categories, have demonstrated that branded experiences provide the best platforms to build desire. In the previous chapter, I touched on the importance of creating a sense of belonging informed by unique experiences that go well beyond promoting a transaction in retail stores, on websites, in mobile apps or on social media platforms.

Not long ago I spoke at a packaging conference in Miami where the event organizers asked me to moderate a round table for a networking session on the importance of driving desire for brands. I had 15 minutes to explore how brands can evolve from being needed to being desired – a tough task considering that my audience consisted of leaders in commoditized categories such as peanut butter, soft drinks and dry goods. I asked them which brand had moved above its respective commoditized categories, and the immediate answer was Apple. The participants identified one of the key factors in determining if a brand commands desire, namely, the willingness of its purchasers to pay more for it than a similar, lower-priced product.

However, the group truly struggled to mention any other brand that had accomplished a comparable feat, which reaffirmed my belief that most brand marketers haven’t yet realized the opportunity in moving toward creating desire. I further probed the attendees by asking them how Dove and Axe deodorant had succeeded in differentiating themselves from competitors by generating desire through a branded experience. I explained why Unilever was such a great example of a company that moved its brand Dove from need to desire through its “Campaign for Real Beauty” by linking the soap to a deep emotional need of young women, namely, self-esteem. The crusade, first launched in the United Kingdom and then across the globe, founded a social-cause movement in which the villain was the personal-care industry’s portrayal of the ideal woman, inviting consumers to challenge society’s stereotypical views of beauty. In addition, the 2006 Dove Self-Esteem Fund was launched to help every female feel positive. Through the use of videos, training tools and events, Unilever fashioned a strong emotional differentiation in a category predominantly driven by price. The self-esteem program succeeded in stimulating desire for Dove, since it transformed the relationship from a transaction into an experience in which the purchaser could effectively support a worthy movement through purchased products. What Dove owns is that moment when young women look at themselves in the mirror and want to feel confident about who they are.

Axe approached the commoditized personal deodorant in a different way, forging an emotional brand connection with young men around dating and having sex. The ads, which were extremely effective and controversial, featured women clamoring for the smell of men wearing Axe products in the hope of an amorous encounter. Although highly humorous and lighthearted, the ads targeted a deep emotional need young men have to attract women.

In developing the ideal experience, there are key factors to be considered if the brand is to break through and connect on a deep emotional level. In the case of Dove and Axe, these brands have prospered and created passionate desire by leveraging branded experiences that effectively connect with consumers on a deep emotional level. Every facet of the brand experience must focus on owning the emotional moment that drives desire, regardless of whether the brand is a luxury one or a product competing in a commoditized category. To help support the importance of creating the right brand experience, I’ve outlined five key factors worth considering when exploring how to move brands from wants to desires.

Factor One: An Experience Is the Sum of Our Senses

The key to shaping brand experience stickiness is rooted in exercising all five senses — which can only be delivered in a physical experience — to convert retail stores into sales environments that take advantage of the emerging experience economy. A 2008 study on sensory marketing published in Science by Lawrence E. Williams and John A. Bargh discusses how retailers and marketers can drive customer engagement by leveraging all five senses.3 Williams and Bargh identify the power of “embodied cognition,” the idea that our senses take over without our conscious awareness.

Many other studies have found that a focus on sensory input can drive consumer behavior. One by Hendrik N.J. Schifferstein, a professor in the Department of Industrial Design at Delft University in the Netherlands, reports that people judge vision to be the most important factor when evaluating products, followed by touch, smell, sound and taste.4 Irrespective of which sense dominates our behaviors, the importance of marketing to all five senses is at the forefront of emerging practices, and one of the key reasons for this interest is the power of the senses to drive emotional connections with brands. Only retail stores can effectively control and deliver all five senses during the process that leads to a purchase, so let’s explore examples of how implementing a consumer’s sensory experience can create retail stickiness.

Sight

Visuals are the doorway to our emotions and provide mirrors for our self-images and aspirations. As such, retailers can develop stickiness by reflecting the desired ideal of customers. Nike stores, with their use of famous athletes, has distinguished its brand’s experience from those of competitors by emotionally connecting with customers through aspirational visualization, while Victoria Secret has leveraged sight and smell as its most effective tools to engage and attract customers. The use of logos, strong emotional images and typography, in addition to the architectural personality of a retail store, all play critical roles in drawing customers. This in turn initiates transactions and helps retain customers by creating strong visual recognitions and connections. Sight also lives in an immersive world through the utilization of virtual mirrors in change rooms to aid customers trying on a range of colors and styles of clothing and eyewear, or tracking the performance of a new golf club that best fits their swings. Sight, and how technology can manipulate its use, can create unique experiences.

Touch

Retail channels such as apparel and goods such as watches and technology hardware rely heavily on touch to achieve purchase decisions. Recently, we consulted for a leading hockey stick manufacturer, and the “feel” of the stick was the definitive factor for a customer to select one brand over another. Retailers who depend heavily on walk-in customers need to ensure their products are easily accessible, and can be held and felt. There also exists an opportunity for retailers to own a sense of touch as part of the purchase experience for consumers, from the tactile elements of store fixtures (think Apple), to the type of flooring in place, to the use of natural versus human-made materials.

Scent

Research conducted by Richard Axel and Linda Buck, co-winners of the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, recognized smell as our most emotional sense.5 Scent provides a direct pathway to our emotions, bringing to the surface feelings embedded in our memories. These recollections reside in our subconscious, allowing the appropriate given smell to ignite positive remembrances that impart a deep sense of reward. Retailers such as Abercrombie & Fitch have leveraged scent as an effective tool to attract the right consumers to their stores, while Starbucks has employed smell to entice customers to drink its coffee. The potency of scent goes well beyond the physical space and engrains itself in the subconscious, resulting in an emotional moment that follows us wherever we are and shop.

Sound

Sounds such as music are an effective way to build brand retention and awareness, which can be as simple as a jingle to link a campaign to a motivating soundtrack and generate considerable emotional appeal for a brand. Intel and Rogers Communications enlist the power of sound bites to build brand recognition, while Harley-Davidson trademarked its sound to differentiate itself from competing motorbike companies. Sounds can either relax or excite consumers, as demonstrated in the food service industry where upbeat music is played to boost eating speeds to drive more table turns, or slow music is broadcast in grocery stores to decrease purchase speed and increase the time spent there.

Taste

Taste is the most difficult sense for marketers who don’t operate within the food service or consumable product categories, since consumers don’t taste clothing or hardware technology. Companies with brands such as Colgate, Pepsi, Budweiser and Starbucks have all leveraged taste as an effective tool in product differentiation. For firms that don’t inhabit these categories, there exists an opportunity to introduce taste-related offerings such as unique candy mints, lip balms, beverages and snacks that reflect the “taste” dimensions of their brands to further capitalize on this sense.

Factor Two: Moves Beyond Engage to Immerse

There are many retail trends whose industry lingo makes headlines and significant boardroom chatter. Retail today is defined by omni-channel, big data, digital marketing and mobile commerce, among others. Like all trends, there’s a pivotal moment when they stop being referred to as game changers and become everyday occurrences, moving from vogues that are the most talked about, to those that shape the retail landscape, to ones that constitute the very fabric of the industry. As a designer, I constantly search for what will emerge as the next “big thing,” that will have a significant impact on how retailers provide deeper, more meaningful engagements as part of physical environments.

When I scan the marketplace, I see a trend that stands out from the rest and is having an impact that’s shaping the future of how we shop, buy and interact with the built environments we often take for granted. This new trend is best described by the word immersion whereby the barriers between the physical world and what is virtual disappear and become one. New technology and channel proliferation are fundamentally altering the consumer’s at-purchase experience. They’re shifting how we use our senses and blurring the lines between physical and virtual realities, offering opportunities for retailers to move beyond engagement to full immersion in a brand story. It’s important to note that an immersive brand experience is more than what we currently define as brand engagement.

Brand engagement takes place when an experience provokes shoppers to create social media posts, initiate face-to-face conversations or make purchases. Although mobile and multi-touch interactive technologies have elevated this level of engagement to new heights, immersion takes place when consumers forget they’re transacting in a store and become active participants in the narrative. You know you’re in an immersive experience when the lines are smudged between the physical and the virtual, storyteller and consumer, technology and physical space. Immersive design harnesses powerful and evolving technologies to fashion experiences in which consumers wholeheartedly participate as new insights founded on shopper behavioral science are applied. The result is not only to convert shoppers to customers, but builds tremendous bonds between the customer and the brand, between the audience and the story.

Immersive experiences exist today through gaming and high-definition movie-making, allowing for the development of rich stories that have the detail typically found in the physical world. The IMAX experience, the use of virtual goggles and interactive dressing-room mirrors, are all precursors for how this technology is evolving and how it will impact the purpose and role of retail stores. Now with the advent of higher-quality projection systems, faster computing capabilities, micro-technologies and gesture-enabled software interfaces, we’re witnessing the next evolution in immersive retail experiences. Immersive experience, better known as 5D design, is growing as a marketing and branding practice. With all of this growth, have you ever wondered if you’ve participated in a 5D experience, or more important, can you spot one when it’s happening? Here are the six signs you’ve participated in what’s becoming the next level of brand engagement:

• Allows participants to be lost in time: Gaming is a great example of an immersive experience often resulting in players losing track of time. Immersive experiences draw viewers in by creating an environment where time has no value or influence. For brand marketers wanting to drive desire, this is truly an ideal technology in which the target group is so involved in the experience that the notion of stopping seems foreign.
• Provides a high level of storytelling: 5D experience is the virtual manifestation of a well-written story that’s visually delivered while allowing the participant full control. For an immersive experience to be relevant, all of its aspects, from the scene and players to the required behavior and rituals, have to be anchored in a story.
• Creates a stunningly real experience: Stunning and realistic visuals are the common denominators of 5D experiences. The harder our brains need to work at discerning information, the more taxing the chore becomes, and the harder it is for participants to remove the boundaries between digital experience and reality. The closer to reality, the more immersive the experience becomes. The brain no longer needs to differentiate between virtual and reality. Without this boundary, the brain’s processing power is now relegated directly to its reptilian region ruled by reflex and impulse, deepening the reality of the 5D experience.
• Permits multiple participants: Humans are social creatures, and the closer the 5D experience reflects our social needs, the closer the experience comes to reality. One of the key dimensions of immersion is the ability to be surprised, challenged and engaged with other participants. The ability to contribute and help narrate the story makes the 5D experience that much more realistic.
• Becomes intuitive and instinctive: To the best of my knowledge, the top games don’t come with extensive instruction booklets. Games are designed to reflect how humans interact with their environments, and as such, immersive experiences are intuitive. Intuitive thinking isn’t a conscious process; it relies on the senses and pits instincts against rational thinking. Similar to being stunningly real, 5D experiences rely heavily on the participants’ intuition and instincts to navigate the experience.

3. Lawrence E. Williams and John A. Bargh, “Experiencing Physical Warmth Promotes Interpersonal Warmth,”Science 322, no. 5901 (October 24, 2008): 606–07. Accessed at www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2737341

4. Hendrik N.J. Schifferstein, “The Perceived Importance of Sensory Modalities in Product Usage: A Study of Self-Reports,”Acta Psychologica 121, no. 1 (January 2006): 41–64. Accessed at www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0001691805000697

5. Linda Buck and Richard Axel, “A Novel Multigene Family May Encode Odorant Receptors: A Molecular Basis for Odor Recognition,” Cell 65 (April 5, 1991): 175–87. Accessed at www.neuroscience.ucsf.edu/neurograd/files/ns200_fa14/090314_paper_discus...

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Find “Desire by Design: What Data-Driven Marketers Should Know About Driving Desire for their Brands” at all major retailers and at Amazon.

More about Jean-Pierre Lacroixand Shikatani Lacroix

Read Time: 3 minutes

From the archives, circa 2015: For most of us, nothing says “summer” like the flash and twinkle of fireflies calling to one another in the darkness. Summer was officially over this week, but in Montreal, you can catch one last glimpse of the nighttime magic. A unique interactive experience sponsored by Space for Life, the city’s life science museums, is following UNESCO’s lead and celebrating 2015 as the Year of Light.

Light Bearers, the June-through-November exhibit at the Montreal Insectarium, is a result of two local artists’ fascination with the frail beauty of fireflies and the flashing dialogues they create. Artists Maotik (aka Mathieu Le Sourd) and Etienne Paquette created a poetic, multi-media representation of the fireflies’ “conversations” using state-of-the-art technology—including lasers and leap motion—combined with an original soundtrack and more than 2,500 original crafted objects.

Le Sourd and Paquette’s immersive environment interprets a natural ecosystem and invites visitors to participate in the experience by creating their own audiovisual show inspired by the tiny light bearers.

DIY magic
Their biggest challenge was to reconstruct fireflies’ natural ecosystem. They chose a DIY approach: using metal rods and standard light bulbs filled with tonic water, they created a field of about 2,500 bioluminescent “plants,” each individually handcrafted and set within the exhibit space to evoke an organic design. The entrance to the 1,000-ft. exhibit is a field of the bulbs filled with tonic water that shine in the dark with the help of black light.

Paquette created the exhibit’s interactive stations with two large pieces of a tree trunk that he hollowed out and arranged to integrate computers and leap motions.

The technical side
Le Sourd and Paquette used normal transparent light bulbs filled with tonic water for the bioluminescent pathway, and special reflector bulbs for the main field, to maximize the impact of the lasers. Three lasers were used to cover the whole surface, blended and connected to a network router. Le Sourd built a tool with Touch Designer to control each beam with a leap motion. 

Two visitors can interact at the same time, by placing their hands on top of the wooden interactive stations. IR sensors on the stations allow each finger to become a light beam—a firefly. Visitors’ movements create a sculptural interactive and generative environment, a mix of organic design, high technology, and craft. The artists say their goals were to create a bridge between science and art and help generate renewed interest in Montreal’s museums. “We also wanted to offer visitors a poetic and participative experience around the phenomenon of communication among fireflies, inspired by the frail beauty of the luminous messages they exchange.”

Light Bearers was open to the public until November 1, 2015, at Montreal Insectarium Espace pour la vie/Space for Life.

LIGHT BEARERS INTERACTIVE EXHIBIT

Client: Space for Life (Biodôme, Insectarium, Botanical Garden, and Planetarium)
Location: Montreal Insectarium
Design and Direction: Mathieu Le Sourd and Etienne Paquette
Art Direction: Mathieu Le Sourd
Environmental Design: Irena Lesiv
Sound Design: Jean-francois pedno
Technical Design and Production: XYZ Technologie Culturelle
Photos: Adrien Williams

About the artists

Montreal-based digital artist Mathieu Le Sourd (Maotik) creates immersive multimedia environments and generative visuals. His work has been presented in festivals around the world, including Live Cinema in Rio, the Plums Festival in Moscow, Visiones in Lima, Mutek Festival in Barcelona, and the London’s BFI Digital Québec. He is one of the artists behind the immersive multimedia performance Dromos.

Etienne Paquette is a PhD in Communications and a multidisciplinary artist who has worked as a designer, scriptwriter, and director creating narrative environments such as museum exhibitions, audiovisual experiences, and interactive multimedia installations. He is one of the creators behind the interactive urban installation Megaphone.

 

Read Time: 5 minutes

Ocean Wonders: Sharks! at the New York Aquarium, instills a sense of awe as visitors come eye-to-eye with large sand tiger sharks, sandbar sharks, nurse sharks and hundreds of marine species native to New York waters—and a suite of digital interactives created by Unified Field (New York).

This summer the Wildlife Conservation Society debuted the Donald Zucker and Barbara Hrbek Zucker "Ocean Wonders: Sharks!" exhibit at the New York Aquarium. The 57,500-square-foot-space that holds more than 800,000 gallons of water and brings visitors nose-to-nose with more than 115 marine species. The exhibit seeks to connect New Yorkers with the waters around them and the challenges of conserving ocean wildlife for future generations.

The building’s design is an organic, fluid geometry resembling landforms carved by water. Integral to this theme is the spiraling ramp that unveils ocean views and leads visitors to a roof deck featuring open vistas and views of the Atlantic Ocean and the Coney Island boardwalk not previously available to aquarium visitors. Ocean Wonders: Sharks! instills a sense of awe as visitors experience the Coral Reef Tunnel, The New York Bight or the mysterious Hudson Canyon’s Edge where they come eye-to-eye with large sand tiger sharks, sandbar sharks, nurse sharks and hundreds of marine species native to New York waters—and a suite of digital interactives created by Unified Field.

The Ocean Wonders: Sharks! Architecture

The exhibit interprets the wonders of the ocean, creating a structure that is inspired by nature with a façade that is alive and visually magnetic. Rising seamlessly from the famed Coney Island boardwalk in sweeping curves, the dramatic design is the product of a team headed by WCS’ Susan Chin, Vice President of Planning & Design and Chief Architect, in collaboration with Edelman Sultan Knox Wood/Architects, Doyle Partners, and Seattle-based interdisciplinary design firm, The Portico Group.  The organic form of the building cantilevers over the boardwalk, creating a new and dynamic relationship between the New York Aquarium and the surrounding community and forming unique gathering spaces for the boardwalk visitor.

The kinetic beauty of the 1,100-foot-long Shimmer Wall wraps around the fluid forms of the Ocean Wonders: Sharks! building, creating a dynamic structure that is ever-changing and driven by the forces of nature. Designed in collaboration with visual artist Ned Kahn, the Shimmer Wall is constructed of more than 33,000 4” x 5 ½” aluminum flappers that move individually with the wind. Ocean Wonders: Sharks! has received a LEED Silver Certification, achieved through multiple strategies related to water efficiency, sustainable sites, energy use and materials. The project was recognized by the New York City Public Design Commission with an Award for Excellence in Design.

Said Chin: “The architecture evokes the natural world and reflects the function within; an engaging exhibit that connects people to the ocean and inspires their stewardship. Ocean Wonders: Sharks! is transformative in many ways for the New York Aquarium and Coney Island’s community and visitors.”

Undersea Interactives

The Wildlife Conservation Society partnered with Unified Field and Chocklog Productions to create a series of innovative undersea interactive experiences, films and animations which enable guests to understand shark habitats and behaviors, explore 3D models of shark skeletons and witness the development of shark fetuses. According to Jason Bell, Unified Field’s Senior Producer on the project, “The experiences our collective team created, weave key messages into highly effective stories and experiences for the new and exciting Ocean Wonders: Sharks! exhibit.”

An interactive media wall allows visitors to explore 3D models and high resolution videos of multiple shark species. Other interactives invite guests to get involved and post a digital magazine cover of themselves in action and stomp out trash in the oceans. The mission comes to life, inspiring curiosity and providing a foundation of conservation in the hearts and minds of visitors.

Unified Field partnered closely with the Wildlife Conservation Society to develop and design the digital media. WCS came to Unified Field with pre-existing concepts for the exhibit, and the interactive studio collaborated with WCS by helping them flesh out their concepts in terms of the technology available to tell the desired stories in Ocean Wonders: Sharks! From a media wall with 3D models and videos of live sharks in the ocean to a newsstand that inspires guests to leave a photo of themselves and a pledge aid ocean conservation, Unified Field accomplished WCS’s goals by distilling the knowledge and passion of the NY Aquarium’s experts into bite sized media pieces that can inspire guests to learn more in the surrounding exhibit.

Ocean Conservation

From the interactives to the gallery spaces and the tanks, Ocean Wonders: Sharks! will drive awareness of the importance of sharks to the health of the world’s oceans; educate visitors about the severe threats sharks face; and inspire guests with the diversity of marine wildlife that exists in the waters around the tri-state area. Through cutting-edge and innovative displays, including a shipwreck and shark tagging vessel, the exhibit will inspire the next generation of conservation stewards. Each year, hundreds of thousands of visitors, and tens of thousands of students in the aquarium’s education programs will learn to value and protect our oceans.

Ocean Wonders: Sharks! is a platform that illustrates the power of the New York Aquarium’s marine conservation efforts, the New York Seascape program. It showcases the conservation work of New York Aquarium scientists both in the field and at the aquarium. Objectives of the conservation program include: securing habitat protection for juvenile sand tiger sharks; tagging sharks to study their migration patterns and promoting better management of their fisheries; developing the science for successful propagation of sand tiger sharks at the aquarium; increasing the monitoring of great whale migrations in and out of New York waters to reduce ship strikes; and working with the offshore wind energy industry to create guidelines for the protection of marine mammals. Worldwide WCS invests in ocean protection, sustainable fisheries and marine conservation. 

—by Marla Supnick and Greg Peduto, Unified Field

Project Name: Ocean Wonders: Sharks!
Client: Wildlife Conservation Society, New York Aquarium
Location: Coney Island, NY
Open Date: June 30, 2018
Project Area: 57,500 sq ft
Budget: $150 million
Exhibition Design: The Wildlife Conservation Society – Exhibition and Graphic Arts Department & The Portico Group
Architects: Edelman Sultan Knox Wood (Architect of Record)
Interactive Experience Design: Unified Field
Collaborators: Chocklog Productions
Photography: Greg Peduto
Videography: Greg Peduto & Daniel Mahon

Read Time: 5 minutes

The Collegiate School in New York City traces its roots back to 1628, so when it came time for the K-12 boy’s day school to move into a new and modern building, they enlisted the help of Alexander Isley Inc (New York) to help preserve the past and design future traditions.

It doesn’t happen every day that a client leaves an experiential graphic design project open-ended save for one very specific instruction: No supergraphics. The Collegiate School in Manhattan is no ordinary client.

Collegiate is a private K-12 boy’s day school that traces its roots back to 1628, when it was founded by Dutch traders, making it the oldest independent school in the United States. The school currently instructs 660 students in a brand-new building on Freedom Place South, but from 1892 until recently, had been located one mile north on West 78th Street.

Because the antique and cramped labyrinthine space was well-loved, it exuded a certain appeal; The interior decor had evolved over decades, conveying the personality of the institution and its students in surprising ways around every sharp corner. The school leadership wanted to find a way to retain the spirit and tradition of the old school as they moved into a starkly modern space—without creating a museum-like atmosphere.

The new building designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox Assoc. PC and Studios Architecture is comprised of 11 floors and 180,000 square feet. To address the concerns of many that the new building—while envisioned to be contemporary in look, spacious and technologically advanced—might not be "Collegiate" enough, Alexander Isley Inc were asked to develop a placemaking program (sans supergraphics) that would infuse the character and tradition of the "old" school into what would be the new and future Collegiate campus.

The Alexander Isley team came on to the project less than 10 months before the move-in date, while construction was underway and quickly began defining the scope and tenor of their work with a series of input sessions with faculty, administrators, staff and students. They led general discussions regarding the nature of the institution’s traditions, the importance of artifacts, what creates a space and ways in which they might honor the past while leaving open room for future growth.

“We decided that our challenge would not be to attempt to replicate history, but instead to establish a foundation on to which new traditions could start to build over time,” says Alexander Isley, founder and principal of the firm. “The idea of surprise—of turning a corner to find something unexpected—helped us formulate our plan to develop a series of thoughtful, sometimes subtle and sometimes quirky installations.”

As part of the program, the faculty created a questionnaire to help each class year select an item or artifact to bring over to the new building. Part of the Isley team’s task was to figure out how and where to install the items chosen, including a basketball rim, a ceiling tile filled with pencils and a wood panel inscribed with generations of students’ names, in addition to some objects that were more obvious choices like an autographed portrait of Winston Churchill and the clock from the library. One of the most sentimental parts of the old school was a stone staircase, worn down from use by upperclassmen: Walking up those stairs for the first time was an important rite of passage for Collegiate students.

Collegiate’s architectural committee was the client group for the project and was composed of the headmaster, faculty members and parents (who are architects and designers). The Alexander Isley team went through several rounds of presentations and approvals—ensuring that every step of the way there was a cohesive, communicated plan in coordination with the architectural vision for the space. Isley says the process unfolded organically and was enjoyable.

The Isley team also worked in parallel with ADA signage designer Peter Scherer of H Plus Inc., whose scope was exclusive of directional wayfinding. The wayfinding system uses the school’s brilliant orange, wrapping the corners of corridors in a gesture that references the old building’s blind corners.

One of the most challenging aspects of the project was removing embedded relics from the old building. Oversized marble plaques that had been sealed to stone walls had to be removed, preserved and relocated. A fragile jump circle from a basketball court had to be cut out and restored. A centuries-old millstone that had been embedded in an outdoor brick wall needed to be extracted.

The beloved staircase could not be removed or repurposed, but Isley came up with a solution: disassemble the stairs and embed a strip of the material into the concrete floor of the lobby of the new building, echoing the idea of crossing a threshold. Despite the concrete having already been poured, the client group loved the idea so much, they had no problem making the change.

Another big consideration in the execution of the project, choice of materials and presentation of artifacts was durability. Signage needed to be removable for frequent painting and delicate objects needed to be out of the way of swinging backpacks: photographs spanning from the 1880s were cleverly mounted overhead at an angle out of harm’s way activating otherwise unused space and a special chair was sealed into a cubby with lucite.

The program was enthusiastically embraced by students, staff and parents, serving as a cultural bridge to the new structure. It was so successful, the Alexander Isley team has been asked to consult with the school, leading workshops with the students to plan new art installations and establish a framework for the development of new student-generated traditions.

Isley describes this new and exciting phase aptly: “I think having an awareness of history and tradition are important, but just as important is conveying the ideas of imagination and possibility and the value of embracing the unexpected; I consider this a celebration of the future not the past.”

Project Name: Collegiate School Environmental Design and Wayfinding Program
Client: Collegiate School
Location: New York
Open Date: January 2018
Project Area: 180,000 sq ft
Architects: Kohn Pedersen Fox Assoc. PC (architect of record), Studios Architecture (design architect)
EGD Design/Wayfinding: Alexander Isley Inc.
Fabrication: ARTfx
Collaborators: Mathusek Corporation (Gym floor jump circle removal and restoration), Sciame Construction (Contractor)
Photography: HollenderX2, Chris Taggart, Alexander Isley

Read Time: 11 minutes

Hot off the press and now on the shelves—the second edition of “The Language of Graphic Design” by SEGD Fellow, author, educator and designer Richard Poulin has been revised and updated with a new introduction, narrative text and sidebars and over 100 new images with corresponding captions.

A notable and acclaimed reference since 2011, The Language of Graphic Design is presented in 26 chapters—a nod to the English language alphabet. Each chapter focuses on an essential design principle—point, line, movement, balance, symmetry and more—examining each through insightful text paired with photography and graphics that illuminate how each principle is applied. With a balance of student and international design work alongside fascinating journeys into the contributions and careers of twentieth- and twenty-first-century design giants, this book delivers a rich understanding of the visual language of graphic design.

International environmental graphic design is represented throughout the book including new and dynamic work by designers such as Base Design, C&G Partners, Carbone Smolan Agency, Collins, Emerystudio, Landor, Pentagram, Poulin + Morris Inc., Sagmeister & Walsh, Bruce Mau Design, MoMA Design Department, Sense Team, Sussman/Prejza & Company, Takenobu Igarashi and Volume Inc., among others. This new second edition is now available in French and Italian co-editions. (The first edition is still available in Chinese, Czech, Polish, and Taiwanese co-editions.)

Co-founder, Design Director and Principal of Poulin + Morris Inc., Richard Poulin has directed visual communications programs for many prestigious clients including Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Carnegie Hall, Empire State Building, Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group, Morgan Stanley, National Portrait Gallery, NPR, Smithsonian Institution, Syracuse University, Vassar College, W Hotels and Resorts, and Yale University. His work has been published in periodicals and books worldwide, is in the permanent collection of the Library of Congress, and has received awards from AAM, AIA, AIGA, Art Directors Club, SEGD, Society of Publication Designers and Type Directors Club in addition to awards from many design publications.

Poulin is also the author of several award-winning books including "The Language of Graphic Design: An Illustrated Handbook for Understanding Fundamental Design Principles" (first edition); "Typography Referenced" (coauthor); and "Graphic Design + Architecture: A 20th-Century History," all published by Rockport Publishers; and "Archigraphia Redux," published by Graphis. 

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The Language of Graphic Design (Second Edition)

Excerpt from Introduction and Chapter 22: Proportion

Introduction

The Language of Graphic Design is organized in twenty-six chapters with each chapter defining a fundamental element (basic building blocks of the graphic designer’s vocabulary) and principle of graphic design. Please note that the inclusion of twenty-six elements and principles should not be interpreted as a definitive number—they are solely a reference to the standard alphabet; the building blocks for western language.

Each chapter includes a narrative and visual sidebar referencing a historical graphic design benchmark to further illustrate each element or principle being explored, while continuing with an in-depth, illustrated overview of what they are, why they are important, and how to use them effectively.

Additionally, dictionary definitions start the beginning of each chapter by way of illustrating one of my convictions as an educator. I have always reinforced to my students the value of the written word. Furthermore, I have stressed that words should never be taken for granted. Graphic designers are visual interpreters, however, we can’t be effective communicators without first having a deep and continued appreciation and respect for narrative form. To further this point, I insist that my students always refer to a dictionary in order to remind themselves of the meaning of words (familiar or not). I believe this strengthens their understanding of what they ultimately need to interpret visually. With this book, I hope to achieve the same with you—the reader.

Chapter 22: Proportion

Definition

proportion pro-por-tion  \pre-‘por-shen\ n 3: the relation of one part to another or to the whole with respect to magnitude, quantity, or degree.

“Without proportion there can be no principles in the design of any temple; that is, if there is no precise relation between its members as in the case of those of a well-shaped man.”—Vitruvius (Italian, 80-15 BCE) Architect, Author, Engineer

Design Precedent

Adrian Frutiger and Univers
Univers Family of Typefaces
1957
Adrian Frutiger
Paris, FR

Adrian Frutiger (Swiss, 1928-2015) was one of the most prominent typographers of the twentieth century and the designer of one of the most notable typeface families ever to be created—the sans serif Univers.

As a young boy, he experimented with invented scripts and stylized handwriting as a negative response to the formal, cursive penmanship being enforced at the Swiss school he was attending. He had an early interest in three-dimensional form and sculpture that was discouraged by his father. At the age of 16, he began a four-year apprenticeship with an Interlaken printer working as a compositor, however his love of sculpture and form has remained throughout his career and has been a strong influence in his typographic design work. During this apprenticeship, he also learned woodcutting, engraving, and calligraphy.

Between 1949 and 1951, Frutiger studied at the Kunstgewerbeschule (School of Applied Arts) in Zurich. In 1952, Charles Peignot (French, 1897-1983) recruited Frutiger for Deberny & Peignot, one of the world’s foremost type foundries located in Paris. At that time, Deberny & Peignot was using a new phototypesetting process and wanted Fruitger to adapt typefaces for this new process, as well as design a large, matched typeface family of different weights. It was during this period that he began to work on the design of the Univers family.

The twenty-one variations of the Univers typeface family has five weights and four widths. At its center is Univers 55, the equivalent of a standard “book” weight. Frutiger also proposed to abandon imprecise terms such as “condensed,” “extended,” “light,” “bold,” “roman,” and “italic,” and instead use a reference numbering system that illustrated the proportional relationships between each variation. At the time, it was a revolutionary concept of how typefaces and their related families could be described.

He also created a visual “periodic table” for the Univers family—its vertical axis identifies different weights; any variation beginning with the same number is of the same weight. Its horizontal axis identifies perspective shifts; from extended to condensed with italic variations. Any weight ending with an even number is italic. Roman variations are designated with an odd number; oblique variations with an even number.

With the design of Univers, Frutiger also started a trend in type design toward a larger x-height with lowercase letters proportionally larger to its ascenders, descenders, and capitals. The sizes and weights of Univers’s capitals are also closer in size and weight to its lowercase letters, ultimately creating a page of text with visual harmony and ease for the reader.

The Univers family of typefaces is known for its remarkable visual uniformity, which enables a graphic designer to use all twenty-one fonts together as a flexible, integrated typographic system.

Frutiger has made an essential contribution to every typographic field in which he has worked. His other typefaces include Eqyptienne (1960), Serifa (1967), Iridium (1975), OCR-B (1968), and Centennial (1986). His adaptation of Univers for the IBM Composer (1966) revolutionized typewriting quality, and his exceptional improvement of typeface design for computers led to international standardization (1973) of his OCR-B typeface for optical character recognition. His typeface for Charles de Gaulle airport resulted in the development of the Fruitger series, possibly today’s best sign system typeface in terms of legibility.

In 1986, Adrian Frutiger was awarded the Gutenberg prize for technical and aesthetic achievement in typography.

Introduction

Proportion is the systematic relationship of one thing to another in any given composition.

In visual communications, it is an essential design principle that is defined as the integral relationship of sizes within a composition. These integral relationships are transparent and function as an underlying framework for all compositional elements.

Proportion also represents the critical relationship between one part of a composition to another or to the whole of a composition with respect to its size, quantity, or degree. Generally the goal of any proportional system is to produce a sense of coherence, harmony, and integrity among the elements.

Historical References

Proportion has largely shaped our visual world throughout history—it is an intrinsic part of the Great Pyramid at Giza, the Parthenon (432 BCE), da Vinci’s Mona Lisa (1503), and Michelangelo’s David (1504).

Euclid (323-270 BCE), the influential Greek mathematician, was the first to put the theory of proportion into words and images. He divided a line into two sections in such a way that the ratio of the whole line to the larger part is the same as the larger part is to the smaller.

Vitruvius (Italian, 80-15 BCE) defined proportion in terms of unit fractions, the same system used by the Greeks in their orders of architecture.

One of the most universal images representing the visual theory of proportion is Leonardo da Vinci’s (Italian, 1452-1519) iconic drawing, Vitruvian Man (c. 1490), which first appeared in the 1509 book Divina Proportione by Luca Pacioli (Italian, 1445-1517). Da Vinci wrote extensively in his notebooks about the proportions of the human body. It was here that he attempted to codify proportion based on his studies of the human form, as well as his numerous observations and measurements of proportions for all its parts. He referred in these notebooks to the works of Vitruvius. Many artists of the Renaissance subsequently used proportion as a primary design principle in their work.

In the fifteenth century, Albrecht Durer (German, 1471-1528) determined what characteristics of the human body were visually balanced and beautiful by accurately measuring and documenting its proportions.

Basic Relationships

Not obvious, and not hidden, the principle of proportion can be simply conveyed. In Priya Hemenway’s Divine Proportion: Phi in Art, Nature, and Science, she states, “The whole is to the larger in exactly the same proportion as the larger is to the smaller.” Its function is to lend insight into the process of design and give visual coherence to composition through visual structure.

In basic proportional relationships, the outer dimensions determine the format of a two-dimensional composition and are its most basic proportion. A square and rectangle are formats with unique proportions that affect particular characteristics of a composition. Outer proportions or dimensions can have an integral relationship to internal divisions and alignments, and affect the viewer’s orientation and are often dictated by the composition’s ultimate proportion.

The relationship between outer dimensions and internal divisions also provides you with a system for managing design decisions. Some proportional systems have been used for centuries in architecture, art, and design. Those systems are based on ratios—a comparison of one set of sizes or quantities with another. Although ratios are commonly expressed in mathematical terms, they also can be expressed as visual relationships. For example, the golden section is a ratio that dates back to the ancient Greeks and its proportional properties possess both aesthetic beauty and structural integrity.

The Golden Ratio

The golden ratio is the ratio between two segments or elements of an object such that the smaller (bc) segment is to the larger segment (ab) as the larger segment (ab) is to the sum of the two segments (ac), or bc/ab = ab/ac = 0.618. (see diagram)

It can be found throughout nature, as well as throughout the history of visual and applied arts. This proportional ratio is evident in natural forms such as pinecones, nautilus shells, seed patterns found in the center of sunflowers, and the human body. It is constructed using a series of extended relationships that possess a strong aesthetic harmony since their interior proportions relate in scale to the proportions of the original square and its extensions.

The golden ratio can also be extended to construct the golden rectangle, which was used by the Greeks as the basis for the majority of their city planning and architecture, including the Parthenon (432 BCE). Renaissance artists used it to create overall harmony and balance in works of painting and drawing. Antonio Stradivarius (Italian, 1644-1737) used it in the design and construction of his violins. It has also been used in the planning and design of the Great Pyramid at Giza (c. 2560 BCE), Stonehenge (c. 3100 BCE),  Chartres Cathedral (1194), the LCW Chair (1946)  designed by Charles Eames (American, 1907-1978), and the Apple iPod (2001). Even today, contemporary graphic designers use the golden ratio as an optimal format for print and digital media.

This proportional relationship has also been identified in many other ways over the centuries including the golden mean, golden number, golden section, golden proportion, divine proportion, and section aurea.

Constructing the Golden Section (see diagram)

Anyone can construct the golden section or rectangle and use it as a base for developing meaningful compositional relationships.

• Step One: Construct a simple square.
• Step Two: Using a line, form the midpoint of one side of the square to an opposite corner as the radius; construct an arc that will define the sides of a new rectangle.
• Step Three: Using the endpoints of the arc, complete the rectangle.
• Step Four: This is the proportion recognized as the Golden Section or Golden Rectangle.

Visual communications is partly an experience of visual balance—of the relationship of its parts to the whole. Perceiving it as anything else is missing its most fundamental component. Just as painting, sculpture, architecture, music, prose, or poetry are organized and methodically balanced around a hidden sense of true proportion.

Most of what we perceive as pleasing to the eye, as well as balanced and harmonious, has some relationship and connection to the rules of proportion.

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Find the The Language of Graphic Design (Second Edition) at Amazonand Barnes & Noble

More about Richard Poulinand Poulin + Morris

Read Time: 3 minutes

Scroll through the slideshow above to see workplace wayfinding that wows spanning 2013 to 2018.

We searched our archives and asked a panel of workplace wayfinding design experts within the community for their picks of the most inspired workplace wayfinding spanning from 2013 to 2018.

This list has been compiled from the SEGD.org site and our experts' top recommendations and is presented in no particular order.
 

Westpac Place | Sydney, 2017 | THERE
Westpac commissioned THERE to provide signage, wayfinding and environmental branding across 24 floors of workplace. The firm was asked to aid navigation and provide intuitive cues for the new types of work styles available to employees, while activating specialist breakout floors and spaces.
2018 Award | Case Study

Google Offices | Sunnyvale, Calif., 2014-2015 | Media Objectives at Valerio Dewalt Train
|| Kirkland, Wa., 2016 | Studio Matthews || Singapore, 2016 | THERE
Google has committed to having clear cohesive wayfinding in their offices around the world, communicating their brand and values through bright colors and textures—effectively guiding both visitors and Googlers to their destinations.
2015 Case Study | 2017 Award | 2016 Case Study

Box Headquarters | Redwood City, Calif., 2015 | Sky Design
Box, a cloud storage rival to Dropbox prioritized office wayfinding from the start, integrating a bold graphic language into the environment. Color-coding is matched to architectural finishes and graphics, further reinforcing the wayfinding.
Case Study | Article

Deloitte Offices | Montréal, 2015 | Reich+Petch Design International
|| Toronto, Ontario, 2016 | Entro
Like the agile environment itself—in which employees have no permanent desk, workstation or office—the wayfinding program developed by Reich+Petch for Deloitte Montréal needed to be about flexibility and choice. For the Toronto office, the goal for Entro designers was similar—support a collaborative work environment—an approach Deloitte calls “Orbis.”
2015 Case Study | 2016 Case Study | 2016 Article | 2017 Finalist

Linkedin San Francisco | San Francisco, 2016 | IA Interior Architects
Linkedin as an organization has been growing exponentially and clearly values workplaces with experiential graphics and installations, having worked consistently over the past five years with Gensler and IA Interior Architects on multiple projects. 
Case Study | Case Study | Case Study

Rabobank Headquarters | Sydney, 2016 | THERE
This workplace placemaking, wayfinding and branding endeavor intentionally and seamlessly integrated storytelling and textual patterns that reference the cartography of Rabobank’s agribusiness clientele. THERE has drawn no distinction between the functions of the graphic treatments, so wayfinding, placemaking and branding blend in a sophisticated way.
2017 Award | Case Study

Nike NY HQ | New York, 2017 | WSDIA
Nike worked with architect STUDIOS and WSDIA to create a uniquely energized branded environment and wayfinding solution spanning 150,000 sq ft and six floors. WSDIA led the experiential graphic design effort, designing custom graphics, signage, bleachers and more.
Case Study | Case Study

Here East | London, 2018 | dn&co
This innovative and bespoke signage and wayfinding program was designed dn&co for Here East, London’s home for making—a 1.2 million-square-foot tech and creative industries campus on the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in East London.
2018 Award | Case Study | Case Study

1 Martin Place | Sydney, 2016 | Urbanite, part of Frost*collective
Embarking on the idea of the leading creative workspace, the project brief was about extending the creative potential of the signage and graphics to have a more prolific presence and contribution to activating the space beyond merely being a functional signage system.
2017 Award

Bloomberg Tech Hub | San Francisco, 2015 | Volume, Inc.
Volume’s graphics not only had to co-exist with signature moments like an aquarium, but also sympathize with raw concrete pillars, brick walls and more refined details such as a diagonal wood-beam ceiling canopy, blackened steel, and leather-wrapped door handles in this office space.
Case Study | Case Study | Case Study

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Read Time: 5.5 minutes

When the Delmore “Buddy” Daye Learning Institute relocated their office, the consortium of Ekistics Planning & Design and Form:Media (Halifax, Nova Scotia) helped create a welcoming environment that speaks directly to the organization’s African heritage.

Delmore Daye, known as “Buddy,” was a well-known and well-loved figure in Halifax’s African Nova Scotian community until his death in 1995. In his youth, he was a boxing champion, but later transitioned to a life of public service as he saw a profound need in the Halifax community. Daye served his community as: Manager of Province House, Director of the Black United Front, as the first African Nova Scotian to hold the post of Sergeant-at-Arms and by helping to form the city’s Neighbourhood Centre—in addition to contributing as a member of many other local groups.

The Delmore “Buddy” Daye Learning Institute is a not-for-profit organization, which carries on the legacy of Daye through generating scholastic opportunities and addressing educational equity gaps for communities of African ancestry in Nova Scotia. The Africentric institute works directly with other African Nova Scotian/Canadian organizations, policymakers, educators, parents and schools to support a mission of providing sustainable lifelong learning, community engagement and providing knowledge resource management to improve outcomes for local learners of African descent.

When DBDLI purchased the brutalist style former Construction Association of Nova Scotia headquarters building, they knew substantial renovation would be needed to create a unique, airy, light-filled and contemporary work space—in stark contrast to their current non-descript office and the newly purchased space, which was segmented and dark. The timeline for design was a tight six months when the client team decided to work with the local award-winning design consortium of Ekistics Planning & Design and Form:Media.

The non-disciplinary Ekistics/Form:Media approach often nets deeply meaningful representations in interpretive spaces and built environments through the use of a central idea or lens. The design team begins by shedding their specific design titles—architect, interior or graphic designer—to reach the essence of the project as a group and form a core idea. Once the core idea is determined, all design decisions are informed by it.

“I think our team finds it difficult just to design space,” muses John deWolf, vice president of Form:Media. “We’re always seeking that added layer of meaning and depth—connecting cultural, historical, or symbolic references.” Chris Crawford, director of architecture at Ekistics Planning and Design, adds that this method is fundamentally ingrained in the way they work and can be surprising to clients at first, “but once they understand how their space will represent [their organization] in a deeper way, the calculus of a project has changed.”

The approach lent itself perfectly to working with a not-for-profit organization with such a noteworthy purpose and rich cultural context. The design team began by recognizing that a critical part of what DBDLI does is collect and disseminate information related to African ancestry in Nova Scotia. Then, the team asked themselves, “How can we best create a space that helps facilitate DBDLI’s mission and helps them that their story?” The next step was research.

The strongest concept that emerged from that process centered on adinkra symbols, which are visual representations of ideas or aphorisms that originated in the Ashanti kingdom in what is Ghana today. The symbols are ubiquitous there; adinkras are carved from a block of calabash or wood, often used with black vegetable dye to create a printed series that form a story on cloth.

The idea of these symbols being used to tell a story and having established meanings in an African culture was key to the design team: Metaphorically, both DBDLI and adinkra prints are a facilitator through which cultural stories and important knowledge can be conveyed. “This notion resonated with the clients, so our job then was to figure out how that might materialize in space on the macro and micro level,” says deWolf. “From architecture to signage, from material to finish, the adinkra woodcuts and storytelling cloth informed our designs.”

On a larger level, the individual offices seem to have been carved like a woodblock, with blackened exteriors and natural wood interior finishes, forming a series that delineate areas. The design also provides flexible work area; a movable partition allows a large community space to split into a boardroom and a classroom. In addition, the office includes a gallery for the display of contemporary African Nova Scotian artwork.

At a smaller scale, multiple stacked inked blocks make up walls: some adorned, some not. Simple black-vinyl linework, evocative of screen printing and handmade cloth, provides safety and privacy screening on glass. Oak Akan goldweight-derived patterns form the front of the entry desk and a drop ceiling that cleverly conceals mechanical systems, providing sound diffusion while communicating a message of a prosperous future.

Black, natural wood and white are the basis of the project’s palette, along with hints of red and yellow that reference its African roots. Brass metalwork makes an appearance on door identification, lighting and in desk surfaces. Even the gray carpet tiles are reminiscent of wood grain, effecting the visual narrative.

The design team collaborated closely with the DBDLI staff to choose appropriate adinkra symbols that would represent the organization, and each of them personally within the space. For example, each director would have their chosen wooden symbol installed adjacent to their nameplate on the glass wall of their office, made to be removable so if they move offices, they can take it along. The team then hired an illustrator, Kwesi Amuti, to redraw the traditional adinkra symbols so they would have the quality of coming from a single artistic hand, while maintaining their cultural integrity.

The new DBDLI offices were completed in July and opened in September of 2018 to a very happy client group, who were delighted by the quality of light in the newly open floorplan and glass-enclosed offices and the striking look and deeper significance of the experiential graphic design throughout. For the Ekistics and Form:Media team, they were very pleased by the outcome, but more pleased to be able to create something meaningful “for an organization that does such amazing work.”

Since the new DBDLI offices have opened, the client and design teams have already started conversation about an expansion, and the project has won the Best in Show Award from the Sign Association of Canada.

Project Name: Office and Learning Space
Client: Delmore “Buddy” Daye Learning Institute
Location: Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
Open Date: July 2018
Project Area: 4,500 sq ft
Project budget: $15,231
Overall Budget: $761,550
Architect: Ekistics Planning & Design
Experiential Graphic Design: Form:Media
Design Team: Chris Crawford (project architect), Rebecca McKenzie (intern architect), Abbey Smith (intern architect), John deWolf (placemaking and signage), Robert Currie (project coordination)
Collaborators: Kwesi Amuti (symbol design), Avondale Construction Limited (general contractor), Rodney Enterprise (millwork), Eye Candy (signage)
Photography/Videography: Julian Parkinson

Read Time: 5 minutes

The National Comedy Center in Jamestown, New York includes a brand-new museum devoted to the history of comedic arts in America—and making people laugh. Cortina Productions (McLean, Va.) and Jack Rouse Associates (Cincinnati) led the effort to design a suite of interactive exhibits that do just that, including AI-enabled “Laugh Battle.”

“I came up with a new word today: plagiarism.”

It’s a pithy one-liner. You might even call it a “dad joke,” but what it most certainly is, is part of the National Comedy Center’s repository of jokes used in its entirely unique interactive experience “Laugh Battle,” which pits visitors against one another in comedic combat, each betting they can make the other laugh. 

The new museum opened in August 2018 with more than 50 digital and interactive exhibits. Comedy legends from vaudeville and silent films to “Seinfeld,” comics and internet memes are part of the story told through the historical archives; visitors are able to learn about the craft of comedy writing and hear from the genre’s well-known voices in addition to trying their hand at various forms like standup.

The 37,000-square-foot, $50 million center was the brainchild of the late Lucille Ball, a native of Jamestown. The small town expects to host 100,000 visitors to the center annually, creating greater economic stability in the region.

Jack Rouse Associates were the exhibition designers chosen for the museum, bringing on Cortina Productions to create the digital interactives. The Cortina team worked on the project for a year and a half, devoting significant resources to developing the cornerstone of the interactive experience: RFID personalization.

The intelligent technology system begins at registration, where visitors receive an RFID-embedded wristband called a “Laugh Band” that allows interaction with a total of 125 touchpoints throughout the museum. Visitors begin their tour by selecting their favorite comedic people and project, which are used to establish a personal humor profile.

This profile links to the user’s RFID wristband to tailor interactive exhibit content, and in the case of Laugh Battle, feed their opponent jokes optimized to their personal sense of humor. For each joke you tell that makes your opponent crack, you get one point. The Laugh Battle system will forgive a smirk, but if you smile or actively laugh, you’re sunk.

Cortina Productions designed the custom backend content management system that enables the National Comedy Center to update jokes and humor profile characteristics, and the visitor management system that tracks and updates each visitor’s humor profile as they move through the exhibits, on the .Net framework. The database of jokes used by Laugh Battle consists of 100 jokes supplied by a joint effort between Cortina Productions and Herzog & Co; the formulation of humor profile characteristics came through a collaboration between JRA, National Comedy Center and Cortina Productions.

The Laugh Battle setup consists of two touchscreens with cameras and a video display behind that shows the scoring so the audience can follow along, all connected to a CPU that is networked to the personalization system and CMS. The real challenge of the project, though, was determining a way for the game to reliably detect a laugh when the environment wasn’t conducive to collecting audio as a determiner.

“Our initial thought was to take a photograph of the visitor when they first sat down and have the software record their facial landmarks,” remembers Bryan Heisey, director of software development at Cortina Productions. “That way, our software would be able to detect a change in a player’s expression, like a smile or laugh, and award the point.”

It was a good start, but would require an additional step for players, delaying gameplay. Through ample testing, Heisey determined the most powerful option to eliminate the extra step for Laugh Battle would be a Microsoft AI facial recognition program within Azure Cognitive Services—it could analyze a player’s face and detect emotions quickly and with a relatively high degree of accuracy.

From there, the Cortina team integrated the Microsoft product and refined the configuration, so a laugh could be specifically pinpointed, as opposed to just identifying “happy.” Then, they hit a roadblock: The AI server generates a charge each time it is queried, and the National Comedy Center hadn’t planned on those sorts of expenses. Fate stepped in, however.

“Around the same time we were doing testing, we heard from the client that Microsoft wanted to sponsor the Center in some way,” recounts Jim Cortina, principal and director of development. Microsoft not only agreed to sponsor the use of their technology, they asked to feature a demo of Laugh Battle at their Envision and Ignite conferences.

Cortina was quick to point out that all of the exhibits for the center are notable and have received great reviews, but Laugh Battle remains a staff favorite because of the fun and memorable way it uses facial recognition and AI. “The technology has served us well in that it allows us to make immersive, engaging interactive storytelling,” agrees Journey Gunderson, executive director of the National Comedy Center. “It’s a good reminder of how much your quality of life can improve if you make the effort to make somebody laugh.”

One more joke: “Before I criticize a man, I like to walk a mile in his shoes. That way, when I do criticize him, I'm a mile away and I have his shoes.”

Project Name: National Comedy Center Laugh Battle
Client: National Comedy Center
Location: Jamestown, New York
Open Date: August 2018
Project Area: 37,000 sq ft
Total Budget: $50,000,000
Exhibition Design: Jack Rouse Associates
Interactive Experience Design and Production: Cortina Productions
Collaborators: Herzog & Co (video content), Microsoft (AI partner), Electrosonic Systems (AV systems integrator), Adirondack Studios (fabrication)
Photography: Jay Rosenblatt (images 1-4), Cortina Productions, Microsoft
Videography: Microsoft

Read Time: 7 minutes

You’ve always liked the Frutiger typeface. Finally, you can justify buying the complete family—but which one: Frutiger, Frutiger Neue or Frutiger Next? They look the same (well, pretty much) yet each has a different name. So, what’s going on here?

By Allan Haley, author, lecturer and expert on all things typographic

What’s Going On

Basically “neue” (and next, nova, etc.) designs are modern, revitalized and updated versions of classic, machine or hand-set typefaces. Many also have more weights and proportions than the original family, in addition to enlarged character sets and extended language capabilities. For the most part, they are better typographic tools. Although there are complaints that some of the newer versions have become homogenized – losing the character and charm of the original designs. (The story behind the three Frutigers is in the attachment to this article.)

Back in the Day

In the days when a font was something you could actually hold in your hand, it cost a small fortune to make a new typeface design. If the initial designs proved to be financially successful, new ones were added to over time. Ultimately, popular designs became a family of typefaces that were similar – but usually lacked the systematic structure and cohesiveness of modern digital families. To complicate things, the technology of machine-set metal type put some pretty draconian restrictions on the design of typefaces.

When a family of metal fonts was adapted for phototypesetting, the compromises that had been made for machine-set typography were kept to ensure consistent imaging between the two different technologies. When digital fonts replaced photo fonts, the same thing happened again.

What’s Neue?

“Neue” means “new” in German. The first neue typeface was Neue Helvetica: an updated version of Stempel and Linotype’s Helvetica design. (Although, at 35-years old, Neue Helvetica isn’t all that new anymore.) It was designed in 1983 as an enlarged and improved phototype version of the original 1957 machine-set family.

Some of the designs, like Neue Haas Grotesk, Metro Nova and Neue Plak, are 21st century interpretations of typeface designs that did not make the cut to digital.

Bottom Line

If you want the latest and greatest version of a typeface family, go with the “neue” design. If you’re looking to capture the flavor and idiosyncrasies of the machine-set versions of the typeface, pick the “non-neue” fonts.

There is, however, an important caveat to using neue typefaces: If your client is using the original design and you use a neue design, there is a strong likelihood that it will not match the weights, spacing or even the structural details of the original. If you want consistency and backward compatibility, you’ll need to stick with fonts of the original typefaces.

What follows are brief backgrounds for some of the more important “original” and “neue” designs:

Neue Things You Should Know

Arial: Arial was originally drawn for IBM and was later licensed to Microsoft. Arial is currently a collection of 46 designs.

Arial Nova: This recent update for Microsoft and Windows 10 features 12 designs in the family, with subtle changes.

Avenir: First released in 1988, Avenir currently has 12 designs.

Avenir Next: 2008 marks the reimagining of the original design, which currently has 24 designs plus Cyrillic and "rounded" versions.

DIN FF: The FontFont version of this popular early 20th century German sans has 28 styles in the family.

DIN Next: The Linotype version of the same German sans has 28 styles plus Arabic, Cyrillic, Devanagari, "stencil" and "rounded" versions.

Eurostile: A 1950s sans serif typeface with 10 styles available.

Eurostile Next: 2007 marks the remake and enlargement of the original design, with 50 versions in the family, plus a rounded design called "candy."

Frutiger: First released in 1975, there are 19 typefaces in this collection.

Frutiger Next: Based on a custom design project from the 1990s, Frutiger Next is a slightly modified version of the original design that currently boasts 24 designs plus Cyrillic versions.

Neue Frutiger: Neue Frutiger is a 2007-dated complete reworking of the original Frutiger design, which includes 40 designs plus Cyrillics.

Gill Sans: These digital fonts were based on original 1920s design and feature 35 typefaces in the family with extensive language support.

Gill Sans Nova: This 2017 update of the original design has 43 typefaces in the family. It is part of Monotype’s revived and reimagined Eric Gill Series suite of typefaces that include Gill Sans Nova, Joanna Nova and Joanna Sans Nova.

Helvetica: The digital version of Helvetica released in 1957, had only two designs. Other weights have been added over the years, to total 24 typefaces plus "rounded,” "textbook" and "Helvetica World" designs. Helvetica World has a very large multi-national character set.

Neue Helvetica: Drawn in 1983 as an updated and improved design over Helvetica, the design is more consistent and the family is built within a modern "system" of typefaces with 60 typefaces, plus a suite of Armenian, e-Text, Thai, Greek, Cyrillic, Georgian, Rounded, Arabic and "World" fonts.

Joanna: There are seven typefaces in the family that is a digital version of 1931 original Monotype metal typeface designed by Eric Gill.

Joanna Nova: There are 18 styles in this family that is part of Monotype’s revived and reimagined Eric Gill Series suite of typefaces that include Gill Sans Nova, Joanna Nova and Joanna Sans Nova.

Metro: Metro is an important 1920s-era typeface and is one of the first sans serif designs developed in the U.S. for machine set typesetting.

Metro Office: This 2006 version of the original typeface was created with a goal of updating older classic designs for office use. There are four typefaces in the family and characters in each share common character widths.

Metro Nova: This 2014 updating of the original design is the best digital version of the Metro typeface design and boasts 26 faces in the family.

Neue Haas Grotesk: The goal of Neue Haas Grotesk was to go back to Helvtieca's hand-set roots and design a large family with consistent shapes and proportions. There are "text" and "display" versions, but this is not a replacement for Neue Helvetica.

Neue Plak: Neue Plak is a 21st century revival of a three-weight early 20th century sans serif display design. Neue Plak takes this historic foundation and expands it to 60 designs across eight weights and six proportions.

Optima: Optima was first released in 1958. Currently, there are 14 typefaces in the digital family—plus two Cyrillic designs.

Optima Nova: The 2005 updating of the original design has six weights of roman and condensed designs, each with an italic counterpart. The italics are also true cursive designs, while the original Optima italics were obliqued roman designs.

Palatino: Palatino was first released in 1950. There are currently two digital versions of the fonts; one is four weights of TrueType fonts and the other is 10 weights of OpenType fonts.

Palatino Nova: The 2005 updated version of Palatino features 10 weights of Latin fonts, plus two titling designs and fonts of Cyrillic, Greek and four weights of "Pan European" Fonts. (There are also new Palatino Sans designs.)

Rockwell: Rockwell is a 1930's design. The digital family consists of four weights plus italics; there is also an extra bold design and two condensed weights. These, however, do not have italic counterparts.

Rockwell Nova: Originally drawn for Microsoft as an update to the original digital fonts of Rockwell, some subtle updates were made to the basic design and Italics were added to the extra bold and two condensed weights.

Sabon: In the early 1960s, a group of German master printers wanted a typeface which would provide consistent and predictable results, whether it was used as machine or hand-set composition: Sabon is the result. There are Linotype and Monotype digital fonts of Sabon.

Sabon Next: Sabon Next is a 2010 revival and update of the original Sabon design. The new family has roman and italic designs in six weights and most have small caps, old style figures and alternate characters.

Syntax: The family has a roman and italic design and three bolder weights of the roman without italics—it's an early digital version of the original 1950s design. 

Syntax Next: The original Syntax typeface was reworked in 2000. The family now has five roman weights—each with an italic counterpart. There are also Cyrillic and Greek fonts.

Trade Gothic: Linotype released the original two weights of the Trade Gothic typeface in 1948. Over the next 12 years, the family was expanded to contain additional weights and styles, the digital family currently has 14 designs. Several of the roman designs do not have italic counterparts. There are also "display" designs that were added in 2017.

Trade Gothic Next: Trade Gothic Next was designed as a revised version of Trade Gothic and was released in 2008. The family contains 17 typefaces in several weights plus condensed versions. All roman designs have italic counterparts. (There is also a "rounded" suite of fonts.)

Univers: Released in 1957, Univers was the first typeface to be developed as a cohesive type family (with consistent weight and proportion changes) from its onset. It had 27 different styles. All were incorporated into digital fonts.

Univers Next: Univers Next is a refined and updated version of the original Univers typeface family. The new family was released in 1997. All the existing weights of Univers were redrawn and the family was expanded to 76 versions.

Download "Neue Things You Should Know" as a PDF