The 2019 SEGD Global Design Awards, the only international awards program focused on user experiences in the built environment—setting the standard of excellence in environmental graphic design and experiential graphic design for more than 30 years—officially opened for entries on Dec. 1. The awards honor design work that connects people to place by providing direction, content and compelling experiences in public spaces.
“The SEGD Global Design Awards are the only awards exclusively for experiential graphic design,” says Clive Roux, SEGD CEO. “That means your projects will be reviewed by jury experts in your field like Lance Wyman, Lee Skolnick, Refik Anadol and this year’s Jury Chair, Kathy Fry.” The multidisciplinary SEGD Global Design Awards jurors evaluate submissions on the specific criteria: connection between people to place, creation on memorable user experience and solution to the client’s objective or design challenge. The jury is composed of nine, highly respected practitioners from around the world representing a range of design disciplines. 3M is the Presenting Sponsor of the 2019 SEGD Global Design Awards.
The seven entry categories reflect the core practice areas of Experiential Graphic Design: digital experience content, exhibition, interactive experience, place making and identity, public installation, strategy, research, planning and way finding. Honor and Merit Design award winners are chosen from submissions in each category such as One Best of Show Award among the Honor awards. Along with the Sylvia Harris Award, one winner is selected from all submissions for a project exemplifying design for the public good in honor of the legacy of Sylvia Harris, founder of citizen research and design.
The 2017 SEGD Global Design Awards Best of Show was an impressive and dynamic light-based media installation at the Kunst Museum Basel entitled “Light Frieze.” In 2018, the Best of Show award went to a futuristic machine-learning-fueled digital archive exhibition, “Archive Dreaming.” The 2017 and 2018 winners of the Sylvia Harris Award participated in “Who, Like Me, is Threatened?” an interactive installation at the Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta and “The Red Stairs,” a student-led residential way finding project from Tongji University, respectively.
Past winning projects have ranged from design research initiatives to media-rich interactive installations, complex way finding systems, retail and interior design, museum exhibitions, branded environments, architectural signage and contemplative public art. Winning projects in each of the seven categories dating back to 1998 are available to view in the SEGD Global Design Awards archive gallery. Winning is an effective opportunity for individual designers, firms and fabricators to promote their best work and raise their public profile because of dramatic increases in visits to the awards gallery. In the last year alone, the awards gallery received more than 70,000 unique visitors and 280,000 page views, more than 10 percent of which were attributed to clients. Winners will be honored during the 2019 SEGD Conference, June 6-8 in Austin, and announced on SEGD.org, in SEGD’s annual design awards print publication and via other media outlets.
The deadline for submissions is Jan. 31, 2019, via SEGD’s online design awards entry system. Submissions will be accepted with late fees through Feb. 14, 2019. For more info, visit 2019 SEGD Global Design Awards Entry page.
The Society for Experiential Graphic Design is the multidisciplinary, global community of professionals who create experiences that connect people to place. For more info, visit www.segd.org.
