SEGD Global Design Awards Entry Header

The 2015 SEGD Global Design Awards are now closed.

Please visit the Awards Gallery


Great Experiential Graphic Design (XGD) happens when multi-disciplinary creative teams collaborate to develop inspired, content-rich, emotionally compelling experiences. The SEGD Global Design Awards honor a wide range of projects, from interactive multi-media environments to complex hospital wayfinding systems, and from museum exhibition design to three-dimensional brand expression. Retail and interior projects, architectural signage, public art, design research, and books have also won SEGD Global Design Awards.

Why should you enter? The accolades are great, but they're far from the only benefit of stepping into the arena of great XGD.

"Winning competitions helps get us new business, sure. But it also helps in recruiting great talent, inspiring our team and, most important, connecting us with new people who are solving exciting new problems. That's what I value the most about it."
Anthony Vitagliano, Digital Kitchen (team member, 2014 Best in Show)

The SEGD Global Design Awards gallery has been viewed more than 500,000 times so far this year on SEGD.org. That's exposure no firm can afford to miss out on!

Entry Deadline
January 31, 2015

Late Deadline
February 14, 2015

Awards Download Submission Guidelines
Header Graphic for the 2015 Awards Jury

The 2015 SEGD Global Design Awards Jury is chaired by Graham Hanson, founder and president of Graham Hanson Design, the award-winning branding, strategy, and interactive design firm based in New York. Hanson’s recent work includes large-scale projects for the Kuwait National Museum, Saks Fifth Avenue OFF 5th, Carnegie Hall, and Google.

Past jurors have included global design leaders, among them Ken Carbone, Massimo Vignelli, Phil Freelon, Ellen Lupton, Min Wang, David Vanden-Eynden, Chris Calori, Clifford Selbert, and many others.

Experiential Graphic Design is at its core a multi-disciplinary approach to design. The SEGD Global Design Awards, therefore, are selected by a multi-disciplinary jury chosen to represent a diversity of design disciplines, as well as clients, users, countries and students.

Headshot of Kristine Matthews, Studio Matthews
Kristine Matthews
Headshot of Michael Donovan
Michael Donovan
Javier Lloret
Javier Lloret
Graham Hanson
Graham Hanson
Anthony Vitagliano, Digital Kitchen
Anthony Vitagliano
Jody Graff, Drexel University
Jody Graff
HEadshot of Stephen Minning, Managing Director of BrandCulture
Stephen Minning
Headshot of Lana Rigsby, Rigsby Hull
Lana Rigsby
Nik Hafermass
Nik Hafermaas

2015 Awards Categories:

 

For 2015 you may enter awards in 7 categories. Projects can be entered into multiple categories. One category per entry form. Download the Guidelines

Exhibition

Projects that convey information through visual storytelling and environment. Applications include museums, visitor centers, heritage parks, themed entertainment venues, trade shows, corporate environments, expositions, and retail stores.

Placemaking and Identity

Projects that connect people to place by accentuating the combination of physical features, people, function, history, culture, and potential that make the place unique. Branded environments, gateways and markers, interpretive exhibits and signage, monumental sculpture, public art, and graphics are some of the tools used in platemaking and identity.

Public Installation

Public Installations are typically site-specific responses to physical landscape, topic, or cultural context, using a wide range of materials and media to communicate, connect, and inspire those who use the space. Public Installations can take the form of artwork, memorials, gateways, landmarks, signage, super-scaled graphics, contextual elements, place-markers, and even branded corporate elements.

Strategy / Research / Planning

As a design discipline that connects human beings with physical spaces, Experiential Graphic Design should be founded on Research/Strategy/Planning specific to communication and human behavior in the built environment, including user needs and human interaction with graphic, symbol-based, and wayfinding cues in physical spaces. In particular, areas such as legibility, navigation, universal accessibility, and understanding of place can be studied and measured to the ultimate benefit of users.

Wayfinding

Information systems that guide people through a physical environment and enhance their understanding and experience of the space. Wayfinding is particularly important in complex built environments such as urban centers, healthcare and educational campuses, and transportation facilities.

Interactive Experience (new category)

Environments that integrate media-rich, interactive experiences connecting users/visitors with the space. Applications include entertainment venues, museums and visitor centers, retail stores, and any spaces where people gather. This would include any environment that allows users/visitors to contribute actively (as opposed to passive learning), whether the space is digital, mechanical or other.

Digital Experience Content (new category)

Strong content is the foundation of experience design, and in the digital realm it is of primary importance. Digital Experience Content projects are those focusing on content, from informational storytelling to brand mission. This would include any environment that is primarily digital or electronic, but not interactive.

Awards Blog Header Graphic
10 Great Reasons to Enter the 2015 SEGD Global Design Awards

Drop whatever you're doing and enter today BECAUSE…
 Sustainability Treehouse, 2014 Photo
1. What you do can change the world, or at least make it a much nicer place to be. (Boy Scouts Sustainability Treehouse)

 

 Victoria Revealed Image
2. Great storytelling should be recognized and rewarded.

 

Olson, 2013 Photo
3. Expressing the brand in the built environment is an art form.

 

Eaton Experience, 2014 Photo
4. You integrate technology into XGD/EGD projects to further the story.

 

City of Bath Wayfinding, 2014 Photo
5. A well planned wayfinding system can not only be a workhorse, but a thing of beauty.

 

Apple Mini Store, 2005 Photo
6. Customers have much richer, more dynamic experiences when architecture and brand values are integrated.

 

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Visitor Center, 2013 Photograph

7. You'll get to put the words "award-winning" in front of your name. Forever.

 

3M Heritage Wall, 2014 Photograph
8. Clients really dig it.
 

 

Change Elevators, 2011 Photo
9. So does your boss.

 

Dream Cube, 2011 Photo
10. Once you've won and get all the acclaim, you'll finally be able to explain to your mother what exactly it is you do for a living.

 

Don't wait another minute! Enter today.

Photograph of Design Awards Jury Deliberating
Handled with Care- Your Design Awards Jury Process

When it comes to the SEGD Global Design Awards, there's no skimping when it comes to the way the Jury handles and judges your entries.

Jury Selection: Jurors are selected for their expertise across various practice areas to represent the categories and the field in general by the Jury Chair, with suggestions from the board, CEO and staff as well. The result is a truly accomplished and multidisciplinary team that really understands what makes great Environmental and Experiential Graphic Design.

Jury Meeting: The Jurors meet face-to-face for three days in a quiet space to review your hard work, and are provided with hard copies of each and every entry. That means your work receives the time and attention it deserves, from nine experts in a contemplative space with no distractions. When was the last time that happened?

Jury Deliberation: First, each Juror reviews every single entry individually. Then, the Jury reviews each and every entry as a group within its practice area, before taking some time out to reflect on what submissions stood out most to them, and why. Lastly, the Jury will do their final deliberations. It's a long and involved process, but it's worth it.

Your best work deserves to be treated with the utmost care. Need more reasons to enter the SEGD Global Design Awards? Here's a list.Want to find out what tips the Jury have for your entries? Voila!Need examples? See award-winning work here.

The deadline for submissions is 2/14! Don't wait another second.

Photo montage: Graham Hanson/GDAP Jury
Tips from Graham; 2015 Global Design Awards Jury Chair

Considering entering the 2015 SEGD Design Awards? Let me assure you, there’s no better time to start. With more categories than ever, the odds of winning are better than you think! On top of that, we’ve assembled a fantastic team of jurors who will deliberate intensively and collectively over three days to determine the winners. We the jury pride ourselves on our selection process being neither subjective nor arbitrary nor imbalanced.

All that said, here are a few tips to help make your entry stand out:

 

  1. Volume does not trump quality. In other words, a few good photographs are better than a lot of “okay” ones. Professional photographs will showcase your work best, but if you’re taking your own, try to take a mix of detail/wide shots and choose the most visually arresting one as your cover or “hero” shot (the first one the jury sees).

 

  1. Optimize the written portion of your entry. Use the “inverted pyramid” model to craft your entry…In other words, try to distill the most important aspects of your project in the first paragraph, then build from there.  Be sure to make full use of the captions to add vital details.

 

  1. Cohesive storytelling is key. Tell us about the problem you solved and how you solved it, not the technology and features. It is a design award. The most compelling entries show and tell us a story about your methodology, creative solution and execution with clear concise language and high-quality imagery, making full use of the space and captions provided (but without any information which would identify designer or firm).

 

What are you waiting for? Get started!

And remember, you can always call or email the SEGD Staff with questions (202.638.5555 / [email protected]). Best of luck!

2015 SEGD Global Design Awards Launches with New Digital Experience Categories

The SEGD Global Design Awards, since 1987 the standard of excellence for environmental and experiential graphic design, have launched for 2015 with new entry categories reflecting the shifts that digital technology is creating in design for public spaces.

SEGD has added Interactive Experience and Digital Experience Content as new categories in the 2015 SEGD Global Design Awards. Honor and Merit Awards will be awarded in seven categories that represent how experiential graphic design (XGD) impacts public spaces. The categories include Wayfinding, Placemaking and Identity, Exhibition, Strategy/Research/Planning, Public Installation, Interactive Experience, and Digital Experience Content.

"This is a very critical time in our field--EGD and XGD are evolving rapidly, right now," says Graham Hanson, founder and president of New York-based branding, strategy, and interactive design studio Graham Hanson Design and chair of the 2015 SEGD Global Design Awards Jury. "The landscape is changing, and environmental graphic design is being defined in much broader ways. That is because corporations and organizations are realizing what it can bring to physical spaces including workplaces, the retail environment, exhibits, and cities."

Technology is a big part of the shift in design, broadening the possibilities for physical space and brand expression, he adds. 

The new Interactive Experience category reflects that fact that user experiences are increasingly complex, media-rich, and interactive. “No longer can designers assume they’re creating one-way communications in the built environment,” says Clive Roux, SEGD CEO. “Now the conversation must go two ways and often engages multiple users at once.” The new Digital Experience Content category, he adds, recognizes the important role that content plays in experience design. “Without strong content, there is no experience.”

Hanson says that participating in the design awards program is important for companies that want to exert their influence on the changes happening in EGD/XGD. "Everybody who enters this competition, and particularly winners, will by virtue of that participation be an important part of the ongoing conversation." 

Entries to the awards program are due January 31, 2015, through SEGD’s online entry system. Winners will be honored during the 2015 SEGD Conference June 4-6 in Chicago, as well as on segd.org and in SEGD’s award-winning eg magazine and other media outlets. Submission guidelines are available in a downloadable PDF. 

3M is the Presenting Sponsor of the 2015 SEGD Global Design Awards.

Visit SEGD's Design Awards gallery for inspiration.