fd2s Blog

There is a small but growing community of people on Twitter who are interested in wayfinding and environmental graphic design, so I thought it might be useful to share a list of some of the people I have recently run across who are tweeting regularly on the topic.

Compared to the fields of web development and traditional graphic design, from each of which you could easily put together a list of 100 designers who are heavy users of Twitter, the highly specialized world of wayfinding and environmental graphic design still has a relatively small footprint on the microblogging service. This means that this list is somewhat ragtag, with a combination of individuals, companies, publications, and organizations. And most of them aren’t cranking out 50 tweets a day. All of them, however, do manage to regularly share links to wayfinding-related news from around the web, as well as information about new projects, events, and even interesting products.

SEGD (@SEGD)

You’re probably already familiar with the Society for Enviromental Graphic Design, “the global community of people working at the intersection of communication design and the built environment.” Their steady Twitter stream is a nice mix of industry news and organization-specific information.

Arrows and Icons (@ArrowsAndIcons)

Arrows and Icons is a recently launched online magazine for environmental graphic design. The web site is still in its infancy, but they are very active on Twitter, retweeting a lot of wayfinding-related items and tracking down new material as well. Editor Ryan Lascano also tweets as @ryanlascano.

Mark Vanderklipp (@corbinprez)

Mark Vanderklipp is the president of Corbin Design, a wayfinding and EGD firm based in Traverse City, Michigan. Other Corbin staffers on Twitter include @rick_stringer and @geneullerysmith.

Sander Baumann (@designworkplan)

Sander Baumann is an Amsterdam-based designer and editor of the DesignWorkPlan blog. He tweets regularly about wayfinding, typography, and the intersection of the two.

Ricardo Hernandez (@rockerdesign)

Ricardo Hernandez is a visual communication and branded environments professional based in Washington, DC.

Wayfinding (@Wayfinding)

Ah yes, the mysterious @Wayfinding. Their Twitter profile offers no clue of their true identity, other than that they live in Toronto, but they do manage to generate pretty interesting tweets on a regular basis.

Amy Rees (@amayarees)

Amy Rees is a Senior Associate at MERJE Design at Philadelphia. She tweets regularly about EGD-related topics, particularly exhibit design. @kelbennett is another MERJE staffer on Twitter.

fd2s (@fd2s)

Of course I would be remiss if I didn’t mention our own Twitter presence. Not a high volume of tweets, but I do try to share a mix of fd2s updates, wayfinding-related news that I find on the web, and links to other things that are happening in the industry.

I hope that this list is a offers a good starting point for Twitter newcomers interested in wayfinding, or regular Twitter users looking to increase their involvement in the discussion about wayfinding and environmental graphic design. If you have other recommendations or ideas, feel free to speak up in the comments.

A few months ago, in a post about the 2008 Healthcare Design Conference, I mentioned some annual healthcare-related conferences for people interested in facility design. Since then, I have been wanting do a more comprehensive list of organizations that promote better healthcare design, and that have at least some interest in the role that wayfinding can play in improving the patient experience.

If you are a healthcare architect or facility manager who isn’t already familiar with all of these organizations, you should definitely give them a close look. And if you’re a wayfinding professional looking to develop a better understanding of how concepts such as family-centered care, patient satisfaction, and evidence-based design are shaping the environment at healthcare facilities, these groups are a great place to start.

1. The Center for Health Design

The Center for Health Design is the most active and robust of the organizations listed here. They are the driving force behind the annual Healthcare Design conference, which is the premier event for people interested in healthcare facility design, and they are also the creators of the Pebble Project, which is documenting the financial and quality-of-care benefits of better facility design, and the Evidence Based Design Accreditation & Certification program.

This is also the organization that gives the most attention to wayfinding, and seems to best understand both the impact that wayfinding can have on the patient experience, and amount of strategic thinking that goes into the development of a truly effective wayfinding program. They regularly feature presentations on wayfinding at the Healthcare Design conference, and have included the subject in many of their educational and research materials.

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Our friends at the Center for Health Design are conducting a survey on the use of design research and evidence-based design in healthcare facilities, and how their growth (or lack thereof) is impacting the healthcare industry.

There are several questions that touch on wayfinding-related issues, and there’s even one question that asks specifically about the prevalence of “Integrated Wayfinding” in new healthcare facilities, which is nice to see.

The results of the survey will be published in a future issue of Healthcare Design magazine. The survey only takes about 15 minutes to complete, and when you finish you are eligible for a 50% discount at the CHD online store. So if you’ve had you’re eye on one of the Center’s publications or research reports, now’s your chance to get a deal.

The Architect’s Newspaper has a good writeup of the recent presentation of student proposals for design of a “compass decal” for the New York City Subway system. The purpose of the decals is to help help subway system users with the sometimes daunting task of orienting themselves when they returned to street level from above- or below-ground stations.

The student work, which is on display at AIA New York’s Center for Architecture through January 24, includes some intriguing ideas, particularly the attempts to utilize and expand upon the wayfinding tools that people use naturally, such as architectural landmarks and neighborhood boundaries.

This New York Times article from 2007 provides some background on the pilot program that was the impetus for this competition, and also has an image of the rather uninspired original version of the decal.

The Center for Health Design announced this week that its Research Coalition and Advisory Council has released an RFP for research projects. From their web site:

Research Coalition funds will support cutting edge research in the field of evidence-based design (EBD). All research studies will go through a peer-review process, conducted by The Research Advisory Council, and principal investigators will be strongly encouraged to submit for publication to peer-reviewed journals.

Studies whose results can be easily disseminated to and applied by facility owners, architects and stakeholders in the form of reports, tools and design recommendations will be given high priority.

The deadline for proposals is January 15. More information, including the complete RFP document and a project budget template, is available at the Center for Health Design web site.

If you’re a healthcare architect or a member of a hospital facilities staff, you are probably already familiar with the annual Healthcare Design conference, which is put on by Vendome Group (publisher of Healthcare Design magazine), The Center for Health Design, and the AIA Academy of Architecture for Health.

If you aren’t already aware of it, however, you should know that Healthcare Design.08 is just around the corner, on November 8-11 at Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in Washington D.C., and that it is once again loaded with interesting educational sessions, workshops, and facility tours.

This event continues to be the best of the annual healthcare-related conferences for people interested in facility design. The American Society for Healthcare Engineering’s Health Facility Planning, Design and Construction (PDC) conference and the Institute for Family-Centered Care’s Conference on Patient- and Family-Centered Care are both interesting as well, but neither has the strong emphasis on facility design (and evidence-based design in particular) that you find at HCD.

Representatives from fd2s will be at the conference again this year, so if you are attending, and are interested in getting together to talk about wayfinding (or just to say hello), contact me and we can exchange contact information and schedule a time and place to meet.