BY Christian Palino

(Non-) Depth of Field

The Society for Environmental Graphic Design (SEGD) is “the global community for people who work at the intersection of communication design and the built environment.” Their new identity and website has been designed by Pentagram partner Michael Gericke and his team. Pentagram has a post about the project up on their blog where they describe the mark as consisting of “four brightly colored panels that can be interpreted as three-dimensional forms, printed graphics or interactive menus. On the site these panels act as visual springboards for the website content, providing sections for news, conferences, awards, publications and learning.”

Old SEGD web site.

The previous identity, designed by Douglas Morris of Poulin + Morris, was a relatively memorable combination of indefinable shape, bright color and a surprisingly effective lowercase acronym with wide kerning. For those familiar with seeing this logo in use in the past, in collateral and online, I don’t feel it ever really found its top gear. Perhaps it was because it was a bit too quirky to apply or perhaps that there have been droves of subsequent logos that employ similar egg-like shapes with typography over them to find a distinct voice.

The new identity seems to have all the right moves with a simple set of structured elements that can be scaled and rearranged to fit various contexts, a well defined and usable color palette, elements that are easily reproduced in diverse color environments and a good conceptual underpinning — but somehow they don’t come together in the execution. The S, E and G panels start to imply space through their scaling and composition, however the D panel abruptly stops this impression by matching the same scale and vertical positioning of the first panel in the sequence. This symmetry and alignment of the S and D panels caps off both ends of the mark, boxing in any energy or rhythm that may have been started by the shifting color planes. The result turns out to be the opposite, a flat mark that loses a lot of the possible “three-dimensional forms” implications.

The stationary program and the newsletter are elegant presentations that show the sophisticated restraint one expects from Pentagram — however the website is not as successful. While the use of the colored panels as “visual springboards” is well intended, it too falls short in the execution. Opening and closing the colored panels, which serve as content containers and primary navigation, causes constant reordering and obscures the labels of the panels to the right of the open section — adding up to a clunky navigation experience. In addition, the composition of the main navigation panels when using the secondary navigation (Contact, Email Updates, Online Order, etc.) feels under-considered.

It’s hard to focus in on a critical assessment of this new brand in the context of Pentagram’s exceptional ability to make it look good — nothing comes out of that office looking bad — however this identity falls short of its potential. Maybe given more time and further applications will expand it.

Thanks to Josh Berta for first tip.

\n\nThe Society for Environmental Graphic Design (SEGD) is \"the global community for people who work at the intersection of communication design and the built environment.\" Their new identity and website has been designed by Pentagram partner Michael Gericke and his team. Pentagram has a post about the project up on their blog where they describe the mark as consisting of \"four brightly colored panels that can be interpreted as three-dimensional forms, printed graphics or interactive menus. On the site these panels act as visual springboards for the website content, providing sections for news, conferences, awards, publications and learning.\"

Many thanks to our ADV @ UnderConsideration Partners