EVENT INDUSTRY

It s that time, brothers and sisters. There are two weeks left to submit your best experiential project for consideration at the SEGD awards.

If you ve never heard of SEGD, allow us to enlighten you: the Society for Experiential Graphic Design describes themselves as the global, multidisciplinary community of professionals who plan, design, and build experiences that connect people to place. We describe them as the cool kids end of the playground. And true to that form, the SEGD awards recognize badassery in, dare we say it, the coolest and often most-overlooked end of the event industry: immersive experiences, wayfinding and signage, experiential graphics, exhibitions, public installations, that kind of stuff. If you do any kind of spatial design yourself, scrape together a presentation and make an entry. If you don t, break out the popcorn and brace for awesome when the prizes are handed out.

Check out some of these madcap winners from last year s pool:

Wayfinding: Mount Stirling Alpine Resort Interpretive Trail

Man, I don t know what an interpretive trail is. Sounds like something they only have in cold places with high winter suicide rates where everyone s really good at making their own fun . Places whose major exports are herring and thinking too hard. But these wayfinding posts are pretty:

With a limited budget, timeframe, and limited access to the trail, a simple, cost-effective, and easy-to-install solution was required. HeineJones created a suite of interpretive elements that highlight local history and resources and presented the information on trail markers that provide visual clarity while blending into the natural environment. Sturdy cypress pine posts are laser-etched with the name of the resort and at eye level, partially encased in three-sided aluminum panels with digital prints applied. The interpretive panels provide simple trail wayfinding as well as walking distances between points of interest and information about animals and plants, helping to enrich walkers enjoyment of the trail.

Exhibits: Eldheimar Volcano Museum Interactive Exhibits

Ooh, another one filed under excellence in existential dread :

Launched in May 2014, the Eldheimar Volcano Museum is dedicated to one of Iceland s biggest natural disasters: the Heimaey eruption in 1973. In the middle of the night on January 23, a volcanic fissure opened up on the outskirts of the town and continuously ejected lava and ash for five months. The island s inhabitants were immediately evacuated to the mainland and many never saw their homes or belongings again. The event shocked the nation and for those involved, the emotions are still as intense and raw as ever.

There was a concerted effort by the exhibition designer to use as little text as possible. There are no panels with swathes of explanatory text that require visitors to read. Rather, visitors walk through the exhibition and learn about how the events unfolded by listening to an audio-guide. The exhibition is partitioned into zones and the audio system senses the location of the visitor and automatically reads out the relevant descriptions.

Experiential: #Trashtag

For Elevate 2014, an annual pop-up festival sponsored by the city of Atlanta, the Goat Farm Arts Center, a creative industrial complex that produces vanguard arts programming, conceived the D_MPSTERS program. They acquired 10 large roll-a-way trash containers, parked them on underused downtown streets, and curated a weeklong exhibition within them. Second Story, part of SapientNitro, was responsible for activating one of the dumpsters based on Elevate s central theme: Social City.

Bring your A Game

Competition is stiff for this one, folks, and entry fees are $50 for students and $450 for firms, so if you suck, you re just kinda throwing money down the drain. But if you got it going on and we think you do jump in. We d love to see you on the roster next year.