Colleague Tom Mulally of Numagic Consulting endured the leviathan of technology trade shows and gives us the highlights on mobile OS, the latest touchscreens, and tablet installations.
Highlights from CES 2012
An app for xlab
Wrote a short blurb for the TwoTwelve blog on our experience designing and building an app for the segd xlab conference which took place in November, 2011. Thanks to Two Twelve and Rubenstein Tech for donating their resources for this first conference app for an segd event. I learned a great deal from the project... Continue Reading →
Mapping and Navigating the Great Indoors
One of the most popular topics at last year's xlab: the Design of Location was what I like to call "the final frontier" of digital navigation: indoors. Google Maps has invested millions in capturing and digitizing our world and Google's virtual globe has given us confidence to self-navigate unknown lands with our personal wayfinding devices:... Continue Reading →
The Intimate and the Immortal
On September 11, 2011, two memorials were consecrated: the National September 11 Memorial at the World Trade Center site and the New Jersey 9/11 Memorial in Liberty State Park. Each was a result of the unique vision and relentless determination of a New York-based architect. For the latest issue of segdDESIGN, I followed Michael Arad... Continue Reading →
Designing Shanghai’s Dream Cube
World fairs are known for their spectacularly immersive, state-of-the-art experiences and last year's Shanghai World Expo recalibrated our already-high expectations for how we interact within unique environments that are built simply to surprise and delight us. ESI Design of New York designed one of the most popular pavilions, The Dream Cube and the firm was... Continue Reading →
Highlights from NY Tech Meetup
Last night I had the pleasure of attending the NY Tech Meetup and saw some very cool new web and mobile services that you might want to check out. (NY Tech Meetup meets every month and helped launch successful apps like Foursquare and Tumblr...) If you'd like to attend, the events sell out quickly --... Continue Reading →
More on Shakespear’s Portraits
Nice mention about Shakespear's forthcoming book on Icograda today.
Words from Where 2.0
A couple of busy weeks ago, I participated in O'Reilly's Where 2.0 conference in Santa Clara. In 2009, I attended the same conference and wrote about it here and there. I highly recommend this event for anyone interested in "the business of location," as the tag line goes. And thanks to O'Reilly for posting all... Continue Reading →
Shakespear’s Portraits
Great artists are blind to the traditional borders of creative endeavor. They don't yield to the exclusive canon built up over generations by a craft's practitioners. Instead, they follow their muse, often tripping from one medium to the next to discover and declare their vision across a mutable palette of artistic tools. When an artist... Continue Reading →
Should I Build an App or a Mobile Website?
At the SEGD workshop a few weeks ago, I was asked how one should determine whether to build a downloadable app for smartphones and tablets or a mobile-optimized website that visitors could access from embedded browsers on those devices. The choice is not a simple one — it is the product of user experience expectations,... Continue Reading →
Workshop in the Windy City
Last Friday, I had the pleasure of participating in the SEGD's Identity, Brand, and Experience Design Workshop in Chicago. I gave a short talk on "Technology in the Wild" -- a survey of technology in the environment (such as digital signage, touchscreen kiosks and smartphone apps) and my thoughts on what it takes to create... Continue Reading →
Floating through the Uffizi in Google Art Project
Perhaps it is because the first website I ever visited (June, 1994) was The Louvre. Or maybe it is because I wrote my undergraduate thesis on "Contemporary Additions to Beaux Arts Museums." Or it might be because I spend my time exploring how digital technologies can help people navigate the world. Whatever the reason, I... Continue Reading →
Illuminating the Underground: en español
My 2008 profile of the Buenos Aires subway system has just been translated into Spanish, thanks to América Late, a website and magazine that covers Latin American culture and design. The subway's brand and wayfinding system were designed by Diseño Shakespear -- and the system was just named a Design Success Story by the International... Continue Reading →
Wayfinding in Your Pocket
I've been following wayfinding apps since the iPhone debuted -- I've Yelped and Monocled all over the country. For this issue of segdDESIGN, I reviewed the latest crop and tried to put them in the context of the conversion of technologies that are making it easier for us to find our way. And look, it's... Continue Reading →
Masdar: Critiquing the Critic’s Notebook
Outside the construction trailers in Masdar, April 2009 and today, from the New York Times slideshow In April of 2009, fd2s was shortlisted to provide wayfinding strategy and design for Masdar, the visionary sustainable city taking shape outside Abu Dhabi, UAE. Herman Dyal and I accepted the invitation and flew 8,000 miles for a... Continue Reading →
Feliz Aniversario Diseño Shakespear
“The incidence of the design is, as Max Bruinsma says, to act as a catalyst. As in chemistry, design acts like an agent, vertiginously producing deep changes in the state of things.” — Ronald Shakespear Over the last fifty years, Diseño Shakespear has galvanized innovation in the design world, and most evidently in their home... Continue Reading →
Badge of Honor
I enjoyed expanding upon the portrait of Gensler's LAPD Memorial which was highlighted in the Design for Good article in this piece. "For environmental graphic designers, it is a rare assignment that asks them to articulate abstract expressions such as reverence, solemnity, and commemoration." The memorial also won SEGD's 2010 Honor Award. Read article >>... Continue Reading →
Medical Center Wayfinding Strategy 2010 (in progress)
I'm very fortunate to be working with Dyal and Partners and TwoTwelve on a hospital wayfinding strategy. It's a large project with a very active client group. My role is to contribute to the wayfinding logic of the system with an eye toward maintenance, expansion, and delivery of wayfinding information through digital technologies. Taking a... Continue Reading →
Digital Donor Recognition 2010 (in progress)
I am currently collaborating with Dyal and Partners on a strategy and concept for digital donor recognition with Children's Medical Center of Dallas. The clients no longer want to manage donor recognition "the old-fashioned way" -- slow-to-install engraved stone and glass for the big donors -- vinyl for everyone else. Instead, they challenged us to... Continue Reading →
Design for Good
What is pro bono design in the context of environmental graphics and how does design make a better world? This was the question I posed in this survey of a variety of design firms and their good works. Read article >> Design for Good (PDF) published in segdDESIGN, no. 28, 2010
The Green Cabinet of Curiosities: Exhibits at the New California Academy of Sciences
In the winter of 2009, I had the pleasure of touring the newly-opened California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco as research for this article about the permanent exhibits. I met with Adam Brodsley, principal of Volume Inc., the multidiscplinary studio that designed the graphics and his client, Rhonda Rubinstein, the Academy’s... Continue Reading →
Ronald Shakespear: Making the City Legible
My second story about Ronald Shakespear (see the first) celebrated his induction as a Fellow, the highest honor of the SEGD. The far-ranging interview touched on his influences, methodologies and notions about the built environment as a whole. I hope it captures Ronald's charming, candid and playful personality, as well as his love of anecdotal... Continue Reading →
Illuminating the Underground: A profile of the Buenos Aires Subway System
In 2007, my husband and I planned a trip to Argentina. Around that time, Argentine designer Ronald Shakespear was named a Fellow of the Society of Environmental Graphic Design (SEGD), our professional organization. Steve Stamper, president of the SEGD and my partner at fd2s introduced Ronald and me by email and we began corresponding about... Continue Reading →
Leslie Wolke consulting+writing 