By now you’ve probably seen those silver, black and blue monoliths on the streets of Manhattan. Looking like giant cell phones, they’re part of LinkNYC,the communication network CityBridge has installed in New York City as a replacement for 7,500 pay phones. These 10,000 electronic slabs are also something else: an early and somewhat faltering step on the road to the Smart City, dressed up now as a new class of street fixture.

When I attended the 2017 Digital Signage Expo in Las Vegas, Eric Heiman of Volume Inc. was speaking at the SEGD Branded Environments event. I sat front-row in a room filled with over 150 environmental graphic designers and those that help us do what we do, and I heard the term “blanding” for the first time.

This year’s decision to bring the topic of Branded Environments to DSE was made to strategically expose as wide an audience as possible to the value that brand integration brings to environments, spaces, communities and places. That clearly resonated with attendees with an increase of over 50% in registrations.

In February SEGD asked the profession about their training needs. The input will be used ensure that the SEGD education program is better tuned to the needs of the profession.

As SEGD experiences growth in membership (a record high of 1830 members at the end of 2016!) on a global level, SEGD’s reach on a local level is also expanding. We’ve grown to a new record of 28 SEGD Chapters around the world, and we’re proud to welcome our newest chapters to the SEGD community.

Things are really heating up in the experiential graphic design field job market, with many firms expanding it is a great time for designers to take the next step in their careers. 

Nick Kapica, 2017 Off Grid Conference Chair and SEGD's Wellington, New Zealand Chapter Chair discusses the idea behind Off Grid, a new type of event for SEGD which invites you to go on a journey discovering new cities and cultures. You will observe how experiences are created in environments other than the ones you are used to. Finally all participants come together to discuss what you learned about experiential graphic design. It's an immersive real world learning experience.

Dear SEGD Community

I hope you all had a fabulous holiday and New Year and that you are getting back into the swing of things! 2016 was another fantastic year for our organization.

For this part, I interviewed Gordon Kurtenbach. Gordon Kurtenbach is the Head of Autodesk Research where he leads a large research initiative on topics including human-computer interaction, graphics and simulation, environment and ergonomics, high-performance computing, and CAD for biotechnology.

Xlab, SEGD’s technology and innovation conference for the experiential graphic design community, was held two weeks ago on October 27 and 28.

​Portland Maine is even more picturesque and quaint than I imagined it would be—and it’s home to Designtex’s surface imaging program, complete with large-format multi-substrate precision-printing capability and staff of artists, craftspeople, and technologists.

On the subject of "going digital," many organizations are on the spectrum. Unless you are one of those Luddites at the shore throwing spears to keep the digerati boats at bay, by now you get the rationales for going digital, but what you may not realize is that the rate of change is exponential.

Design Thinking is Becoming a Driver of Innovation

Besides spatial orientation, creating a sense of place and knowing what is there, what other problems or needs might the experiential graphic design community solve for users?

It's the day after conference and there is a steady flow of people from the taxi stand outside the Westin Seattle. We're all heading home. Some look a little worn out, but it does not appear that we took any casualties, despite some really good stories. Way to throw a family party, SEGD clan!

Now that's the way to greet the SEGD wayfinding community!

It's not every day that SEGD gets to take over the main sign to the entrance of an airport. Especially Miami International Airport, the second largest airport in the country with just over 44 million passengers last year!

If you are a firm leader or have been tasked to improve your firm’s digital presence, this article is for you.

This year we’ve been undertaking a large project to categorize and enrich the data we have on all of our member firms in preparation for an updated firm finder for the community.

I’m looking forward to continuing with the vision and initiatives that were put in place by Jill Ayers, our incredibly talented past president, including growing our organization to an all-time high of 1,795 members in 2015 and growing our student membership by 22%!

Member benefits continue to get stronger all the time! This quarter, we continued our ongoing work to improve the value of membership to you--and broke a few records along the way! Membership is at a record high, we just posted the 100th SEGD Talks video, we produced more than 500 new articles on the website and in eg magazine in 2015, and last but not least, we surpassed 3,300,000 page views on www.SEGD.org!

SEGD's student group has more than doubled this year. Thank you and welcome to all our new student members!

The Experiential Graphic Design profession is having a very busy year and growing strongly. This is good news for the jobs market. SEGD offers many ways for you to link to the profession and the profession to link to you, but a recent exchange with a student looking for a job suggested to us that many students aren't taking advantage of these connections. We can help with that! Read more...

Previously I SEGD-blogged about one of our more experienced members, Susan Jackson Keig. This time I want to take a moment to blog about some of the youngest members of our community.

The 2015 SEGD Conference: Experience Chicago is over and according to most of the attendees the staff came into contact with, this one was the best, one of the best, awesome, fantastic--you name th

Feeling thirsty and adventurous? After all, your evenings are your own at the SEGD Conference, so why not take advantage?

In the spirit of entropy, and an urge to explore (did someone say xplore?), I present to you a few random (but really fun-sounding) ideas for your albeit limited free time during the 2015 SEGD Conference:

Candidate John Lutz is... Going Somewhere

Chicago—Earlier today, John Lutz nearly announced his candidacy to assumed billions of Internet viewers and his purported Facebook friends: “My name is John Lutz and I’m announcing my candidacy because I’m #goingsomewhere”. An elderly relative was reported as saying, “I’m glad he’s going somewhere. I’d like my basement back.”

Happy Spring! I hope everyone is having a productive season, feeling inspired every bit of the way. From talking to members over the last few months, it appears that people are busier than ever and that’s a great thing. We recently held our quarterly board meeting at the RTKL offices in downtown Los Angeles, where we reviewed several planning issues for 2015, including our strategic plan.

In October 2010, SEGD proudly introduced a universal set of healthcare symbols, developed in collaboration with Hablamos Juntos (Spanish for “let’s talk together”). It is obvious that it was an enormously complex project and quite an achievement, for which we want to compliment all the many people involved. Also, it is obviously too late for us to “talk together,” about it, so let's review the results.

2014 - A year to remember

Thank you to all the Experiential Graphic Design leaders who joined us for SEGD’s first-ever Business of Design Summit in Denver two weeks ago. We have begun the process of talking about the future of the profession's firms and getting our profession's leadership group together to talk about excellence, sustainability, and growth.

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!

The ways we engage with the world have changed radically, and seemingly overnight.

The Business of Design, says consultant and author Keith Granet, is about balancing creativity and profitability. I think we can all live with that as a simple definition.

By Clive Roux, CEO

You all know the feeling: While you are in the thick of things, it does not seem as if much is moving. That is until you have a moment to stop and look back on where you have come from. That is the kind of summer SEGD is having.

By Sharon Jiskra Brooks

I was invited to speak recently at an SEGD Chicago chapter event.

Local designers give tips on things to do and places to go when you come to Atlanta for the 2014 SEGD Conference June 5-7, 2014!