The International Sign Association (ISA) had their annual conference and expo April 3-6 at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas. This year ISA made a concerted effort to reach out to designers and offer more educational sessions that specifically target designers and the issues they face in the world of environmental graphic design (EGD). Many of our SEGD colleagues and industry friends from leading EGD firms were represented: Gensler, Two Twelve Associates, Calori & Vanden-Eynden, and Studio SC to name a few.

I represented fd2s at the conference and, despite my general aversion to Las Vegas, had a great time! The quality and content of the seminars were well done and informational. Topics included incorporating BIM and Revit into design workflows, which seems great in theory, but has not been embraced by designers. We also discussed evidenced-based design – something I think all designers should embrace to shift decision-making from the subjective toward the objective. The speakers also did a good job of engaging their audience, with several wrapping up their talks with outstanding audience questions. A good sign – pardon the pun.

The exhibit hall was interesting even if there seemed to be a glut of large format printers and LED suppliers from China and Korea. There seemed to be few truly new fabrication techniques or products on display, but I nevertheless left with quite a few additional sources for products and services that I didn’t previously know about. This will make for a happy resource library back in the fd2s studio!

The expo hall and a number of the seminars afforded good opportunities to network with designers, fabricators, manufacturers and suppliers. In particular, it was great to connect with DG Studios, Babendure Design, 505 Designs and EMG to name just a few.

by Rick Smits

Many major tech brands—such as Google, Blackberry, and Mashable—set up camp and lured visitors with exciting new products and services. Smaller social media startups offered grilled cheese sandwiches in exchange for proof of using their app (or evidence that you’ve at least downloaded it). These and other major brands also sponsored lunches, happy hours, and evening parties, the latter of which included free music and booze for badge holders and RSVPers.

For non-badge holders, there were plenty of unofficial SXSW things to see and do, such as public art installations, secret music shows, and speaker events that included a Pecha Kucha hosted with Pentagram’s parking lot as the venue. Speakers offered musically themed design talks, two of which included integration of a baby grand piano.

With many of the featured sessions posted online, people could catch whatever they missed (and visuals were often provided via Slideshare). This benefit even applied to badge-holders, who didn’t always get to see what they came for due to schedule conflicts and “sold out” auditoriums.

Central to the week’s showcase of technology, innovations, and ideas are the following questions. Are you excited about the new possibilities? How do you see them playing out in your everyday life as well as in emerging economies? How will we create more meaningful interactions among people and between people and intelligent connected devices? How will we improve our cities?

Gensler teamed up with Mass Relevance, Rand, and Stratus to ask, ”What would a redesigned Austin look like? Subsequent tweets were projected on a large screen installed on a facade of the W Hotel.

One session particularly relevant to us in wayfinding and EGD was delivered by fd2s alum Leslie Wolke and Jake Barton, founder and principal of Local Projects. They walked through a case study entitled “Change By Us,” an open-source application with its first project up and running for New York City. Another talk, which was previewed for us during  XLab in November, was Carina Ngai’s “Design for Aging“, in which she offered a methodology to “move us beyond usability and into a process of innovation.” Just how that process unfolds will be interesting to observe.

What other sessions did you find particularly relevant? Inspiring? Thought-provoking?

UAMS Donor Recognition Signage

Today we feature an excerpt from our Donor Recognition White Paper.

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At facilities ranging from hospitals and college campuses to performing arts centers and public sports complexes, administrators and fundraising teams are dealing with new challenges related to how donors should be recognized in the built environment.

These donor recognition challenges are closely related to broader, ongoing trends in the fundraising world, which include:

• Greater fundraising needs.
• Increased competition.
• More sophisticated donors.
• More elaborate campaigns.

All of these factors, along with enormous advances in the technology available for creating and maintaining donor recognition elements, are dramatically changing the way we acknowledge donors in the built environment. The days of the single bronze plaque in the building lobby are long gone, and its replacement is a complex, changing – and often technology-enhanced–assortment of recognition elements spread throughout a facility.

Not only are institutions asking these new elements to recognize more levels of donors, for more campaigns, in more places, they are also demanding that they entertain visitors, and encourage new donations by delivering compelling information about the institution’s mission and its existing donor base.

The purpose of this document is to help development professionals and facilities managers get a better feel for the issues surrounding the creation of an institution- or facility-wide donor recognition program, assemble the team and resources required to tackle these issues, and then take the first steps toward the development and implementation of a successful donor recognition strategy.

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To find out more about the way we think about the complexities of Donor Recognition, request a copy of our Donor Recognition White Paper.

The eight-page document consists of questions – divided into the categories of signage, printed materials, interactive tools, operations, and other – that are intended to both bring conspicuous issues into clearer focus, and also point out less obvious missed opportunities for improving the patient and visitor experience with better wayfinding.

Rather than serving as a “test” or “scorecard” with results that are quantifiable, but not actionable, the self-evaluation is designed to jump-start further discussions about the wayfinding challenges facing an institution, and shed light on possible solutions.

To request a free, no-obligation copy of the self-evaluation document in PDF form, please send an email with your name and contact information to Steve Stamper at sstamper@fd2s.com, or call 512.476.7733.

Most wayfinding specialists, however, are still wrestling with the idea of what is practical, or even desirable, when it comes to incorporating wayfinding information into BIM. Because of this, we decided that it might be useful to talk briefly about what we see as the key limitations, and potential strengths, of BIM as it relates to wayfinding, and invite others to share their thoughts.

The Limitations

Design Constraints
Chief among the reasons for the slow implementation of BIM by wayfinding and environmental graphic design consultants are the design limitations of CAD-based BIM tools like Revit. While signage does have architectural characteristics (materials, mounting methods, support structures, etc.), it also has graphic design aspects, such as typography, symbols, and sometimes even placed imagery.

And CAD tools don’t even come close to providing the advanced typographic and layout capabilities offered by the software currently used by most designers. For this reason, designers still strongly prefer to use applications like Adobe Illustrator for the development and documentation of actual signage elements, and then export drawings to CAD files for incorporation into project bid documents and/or Revit as appropriate.

Database Limitations
In addition to necessitating the ability to fine-tune the design, the content-heavy nature of building signage also creates a need for message schedules that can be easily sorted and filtered. While Revit does include database functions, it doesn’t provide as much power or flexibility as applications like FileMaker Pro, which allows designers to create highly customized message schedules and then quickly sort and output the data to meet the needs of everyone from proofreaders to fabricators.

The Overkill Factor
When it comes to simple sign types, like room identification elements, placing them using Revit means a lot more work with very little additional benefit. While larger or more complex signage elements may involve other building systems (particularly power), the small signs that make up the bulk of a building’s signage program are fairly repetitive and self-contained. This means that taking the substantial amount of extra time required to place them in three dimensions, as opposed to just showing them as dots on a plan, adds little value to the documentation.

Learning Curve and Costs
Compounding the above factors are issues related to the resources required to get up and running on a BIM system like Revit. While most wayfinding/EGD firms now have at least one person who is well versed in AutoCAD, and a couple of dedicated CAD workstations, it still isn’t fully integrated into the daily workflow. That means that extensive use of BIM principles on more projects will require additional staff training and the purchase of additional Revit licenses.

There are also costly hardware issues, since most firms focused on wayfinding strategy and design still work primarily in a Mac environment, and Revit is a PC-only application.

The Benefits

In addition to the obvious convenience of integrating wayfinding components into the overall project documentation, there are some other promising benefits that offer hints of how BIM can actually benefit the practice of environmental graphic design.

Object Tracking
While the actual design and documentation of individual sign types in the BIM/Revit environment is unlikely to become commonplace anytime soon, the documentation of locations and messages is much easier to envision, particularly if some of the shortcomings mentioned above can be addressed.

BIM is already being used to track items such as fixtures, doors, etc., and tracking signage components is a natural extension of this. And three-dimensional sign locations, while being time consuming to document, do help to ensure that this information is available to all of the consultants and tradespeople involved with a project, which can help to limit last-minute installation issues.

And while Revit’s database capabilities are currently less robust than a standalone database application like Filemaker Pro, it does have some of these capabilities built in, and it is easy to see some benefit in creating an integrated database if these were expanded.

3D Presentations
While BIM does not by definition have to include three-dimensional documentation, it does seem to be the norm, particularly when Revit is the tool being used. And Revit backgrounds have proven to be a great tool for creating compelling presentations of wayfinding concepts, allowing us to show SketchUp models of signage elements applied to three-dimensional renderings of the latest project architecture.

Understandable Building Documents
Clearer documents are another benefit of the three-dimensional nature of most BIM projects. Because signage elements are mounted in a variety of different locations and at varying heights (including from ceilings) depending on sign type, it is important for designers to understand the surrounding architectural conditions when specifying locations and mounting methods.

While this information is available in traditional CAD drawings, it is often subject to misinterpretation, and the three-dimensional nature of Revit documentation does help to clarify these conditions and minimize the need for last-minute changes during the installation process.

The Future

We are continuing to expand the way we incorporate BIM principles into our own projects. This includes working with architects to find ways to balance the team’s desire to have everything documented in Revit with what is practical from a budget and schedule standpoint, and also conducting independent research into ways that BIM can be used to meet the unique needs of wayfinding system documentation and management.

At the moment, our belief is that BIM and wayfinding will primarily find compatibility on very large institutional projects, but with further enhancements to BIM software tools there is the potential for this to expand to a wider spectrum of project sizes and types.

Does anyone else have different attitudes about, or approaches to, integrating wayfinding and BIM? And are there other tools in the works that could impact this process, such as a wayfinding-specific Revit extension?

Please share your thoughts in the comments.