SEGD loses one of its own with the passing of Jane Davis Doggett, FSEGD

SEGD is saddened to lose a significant member of the experiential design community. Jane Davis Doggett, 2018 SEGD Fellow, passed away at the age of 93 on April 10, 2023.

  1. 2018 SEGD Fellow Jane Davis Doggett

  2. Doggett’s “Iconochrome” series represents philosophically profound messages.

  3. Doggett’s “Iconochrome” series represents philosophically profound messages.

  4. Doggett’s “Iconochrome” series represents philosophically profound messages.

  5. Doggett saw the logic of using a standard font as a unifying element. She created “Alphabet A,” adapting it from German Standard, a forerunner of Helvetica.

  6. Doggett’s Miami International Airport logo was based on the nautilus to express the ocean environment, in bright, South Florida colors.

  7. The Houston International Airport was Doggett’s first multi-terminal complex and the place where she first introduced the A, B, C terminal codifications.

  8. The two-color system at Tampa, which is optimized for color-blind viewers, is still in use.

  9. At BWI, Doggett’s coding utilized the nautical signal flag system: each concourse was designated by a separate letter with its nautical symbol displayed to enhance codification.

SEGD loses one of its own with the passing of Jane Davis Doggett, FSEGD

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SEGD is saddened to lose a significant member of the experiential design community. Jane Davis Doggett, 2018 SEGD Fellow, passed away at the age of 93 on April 10, 2023.

Jane Davis Doggett was 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 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, a native of Nashville, Tenn., first attended Newcomb College at Tulane University, and later earned 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 considered major influences, together with her contemporaries, architects Frank Gehry and Bob Stern, painter Jasper Johns and late graphic designers Ivan Chermayeff and Sam Antupit. Doggett first connected with the SEGD Community in 2017 through design colleagues Sue Gould, FSEGD and SEGD Past President, and Tracy Turner, an SEGD Past Board Member, who later interviewed Doggett in 2013 for SEGD’s eg magazine No. 07, 2013, and posted on the SEGD website.

In addition to her work in airports, she 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 counted 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.

Doggett was the recipient of numerous accolades, including: SEGD Fellow in 2018, 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.

Jane Davis Doggett’s acclaimed airport design work and standards are featured throughout the SEGD Global Design 2022 Merit award winning “Airport Wayfinding” book written by Heike Nehl and Sibylle Schlaich, published in 2021.