Hasta La Ideas

Aaron Leighton is coming to town! You’re welcome to join us this Thursday at 7:30pm at the Kensington Pub for sketching and beer.

Sitting in on the sessions at the Society for Environmental Graphic Design’s (SEGD) annual conference in San Diego last month, we were struck by how similar some of the concerns and discussion points were to those of other designers. Environmental graphics serve a crucial role in defining the character and navigability of public spaces — especially big, complicated ones like museums and hospitals — but frequently go unnoticed unless they’re absent or poorly designed.

Imagine our joy, then, at the notoriety now being accorded SEGD Fellow David Gibson, not only from the professional organization that honored him last month, but from the design world as a whole. Gibson’s recently released book on signage and wayfinding (pictured above) is the subject of an excellent interview in the May issue of Metropolis, and his studio, Two Twelve Associates, has been racking up awards over the past few years for its groundbreaking approaches to signage and wayfinding for clients like Radio City Music Hall , Johns Hopkins Hospital, and the City of Baltimore. The scale of such tasks both excites and unsettles us — imagine your field of expertise requiring design solutions for an area hundreds of acres in size.

Signage and wayfinding in general seem to be gaining a higher profile in the US of late, perhaps as part of renewed interest in urban infrastructure, or a greater focus on alternative transportation brought on by economic and environmental concerns. This article in particular, by Alissa Walker for Fast Company caught our eye last week, pointing out how something as humble as cycle-oriented street signage can dramatically alter the viability of cycling in a city (Los Angeles) not historically known for its bikeability. It’s just a proposal at the moment, by designer Joseph Pritchard, but it’s got the advantages of clarity, low implementation cost, visual differentiation, and if all the above is any indicator, good timing.

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Yesterday we wandered the showrooms on the 3rd, 10th and 11th floors of the Merchandise Mart. While there’s not really any comparison to giants like Herman Miller, Knoll, Steelcase and Haworth (who has a wading pool in their space), we thought that the work and presentation of Bernhardt Design, Coalesse and Janus et Cie was particularly refreshing and worth noting.

Bernhardt showcased brand new work from their Global Editions line, including the Hyde chair designed by Fredrickson Stallard (pictured above), the Area table by Marc Thorpe and the Calibra sofa from Gloria and Harry Washington. Coalesse recently teamed up with the Italian furniture company Emu, distributing outdoor furniture from EMU’s Advanced Collection to North America. Designed by the likes of Patricia Urquiola and Paula Navone, this collection of super durable furniture gets inspiration from things like hair clips and topiary. To celebrate this new partnership, they covered a room in thousands of specially printed green post-it notes, to give a sense of the outdoors. To a similar effect, Janus et Cie installed a fake topiary in an empty showroom just for the occasion, showing the new Miralook and PayPai Chairs, for both indoor and outdoor use.

See more from these three after the jump.

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Every year, Morlen Sinoway opens the loading dock outside of his Fulton Market gallery to local artists and designers as a temporary exhibition space, coincident with and in response to the annual NeoCon trade show at the Merchandise Mart in Chicago. Now in its 5th year, the Guerrilla Truck Show has become quite the institution, with over 25 trucks exhibiting, and for many visitors to NeoCon, a must-see item on their list of things to do in Chicago.

We stopped there last night on our way out, and despite the pouring rain, the scene was vibrant as designers, artists and spectators hopped from truck to truck. Exhibitors included new designers, up-and-comers and local retailers like Materious, Craighton Berman, Noel Ashby, Designlabworkshop, Koomalsingh Design, Steven Teichelman and Angela Finney-Hoffman of Post27.

If you’re interested in Guerrilla Truck Shows of the past, check out their Flickr stream.

More rainy pictures of last night after the jump.

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Angie’s List, a website where consumers provide reports and reviews of local service companies, is having a Clutter Contest this summer:

Submit photos of clutter catastrophes — whether you own or another worthy candidate’s — and a brief explanation to mailbag@angieslist.com by August 1. We’ll select the most awe-inspiringly hideous office or home and crown a national king or queen of clutter. Whoever “wins” our contest will qualify for a clutter cleanout compliments of a highly rated service company in the Organization-Home and Garage category [on their website]. And we’ll feature the winner in our magazine.

Even if you aren’t a contender to be the king or queen of clutter, you might know someone who could use some help. Pass the word along (kindly, of course) and maybe your friend can win a free makeover!