As a visitor passes through an office-building lobby, images that are partially glimpsed in one wall—raindrops, time-lapse clouds, a school of fish—subtly respond: the rain softly falls; the fish swim alongside. In the curtain wall of a campus biology building, patterns based on fundamental principles of nature morph from one to another as visitors create and upload designs of their own. In the facade of a science gallery, over 200 handmade glass bricks become miniature projection booths playing a kaleidoscopic preview of the exhibition inside. Architecture and experiential graphic design (EGD, or XGD) are converging; in the process, digital media have become dynamic new construction materials.
Imagine a Venn diagram showing the place-making arts and the communication arts as two intersecting circles: the area of overlap is the interdisciplinary practice of EGD. Spanning the spectrum from information to art, EGD orchestrates such elements as typography, imagery, color, form, and, increasingly, technology to create environments that communicate, according to Cybelle Jones, CEO of the Society for Experiential Graphic Design (SEGD). “Silos of design are breaking down,” she says. “Architects are doing digital, and experiential designers are creating places and spaces.” Jones, who trained as an architect before embarking on her career in EGD, personifies this convergence. What’s accelerating it, she suggests, is the contemporary pace of change, whether in response to the pandemic, the climate crisis, social inequities, economic disparities, or these factors in combination: “Architecture is stable, secure, and solid, but our world is rapidly changing. Digital materials provide a layer that enables buildings to become more agile and responsive to changing needs.”
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