News.

The Society for Experiential Graphic Design (SEGD) kicked off their Orange County chapter this past week at RSM Design! Sydney Patterson, Senior Designer at RSM, and her co-chairs, Kathy Guerineau Shook and Josh Huckleberry put together an evening consisting of tacos, s’mores and collaboration. The night was an inspiring time of networking and sharing new ideas for the future of SEGD Orange County and the experiential graphic design industry. 

The event was hosted in the Lot at RSM Design. Guests were able to enjoy the sunset over refreshments provided by brands we all know and love; Bearded Tang Brewery, Topo Chico and Juneshine! 

Follow SEGD Orange County on Instagram or visit their website to stay in the loop for future events. SEGD OC has just begun! 

Cheers to the beginning of a great community! 

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Celebrating 25 Years of RSM Design

Our annual workshops are an event that every employee of RSM Design looks forward to each and every year. It’s a time to come together, get inspired, deepen our relationships with one another, and celebrate our accomplishments.

In 2020 and 2021 we put our gatherings on pause. It was hard, but it was the right thing to do, considering the pandemic. During that time, we noticed a longing for reconnection. They were craving in-person connection. The workshops had always been a crucial part of our company’s culture and connection. So when 2022 rolled around we knew it was time to re-gather. And, it was going to be the 25th anniversary of RSM Design. It was a no brainer.

DRAFTING UP A PLAN

Planning began with our internal team in the early half of the year. We connected with speakers local and far, researched team building activities, drew up a logo, put it on some cool trucker hats, tote bags, coffee mugs, and more. We let the creative wheels turn.

THE SPEAKERS

Speakers played an important role in our workshops, which we titled Creativity x Communication. Our first speaker was Robin Osborn, an executive coach at Kothari Leadership, who specializes in coaching and transforming organizations and leaders. Robin led the team through a DiSC workshop, which uses a personal assessment tool to recognize patterns in our communication and collaboration styles. Our team discussed how we can improve teamwork and productivity by gaining a deeper understanding of our different styles of communication. 

Jenny Famularcano joined us on Thursday morning to talk about organizing your creative process, both personally and within a team. She is an educator at Chapman University and Denver Ad School, as well as a lettering artist. She shared with us her best practices for organizing creative ideas, and warmed us up with a little Zumba! 

Tyrone Drake is an educator, graphic design professional, and an associate professor at ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena. With over 25 years of experience in both the education and professional design realm, Tyrone discussed the benefits of working in teams to come to creative and innovative design solutions. He shared an inspirational story of his experience guiding students through a UX/UI project during a study abroad program in Berlin, Germany. 

Our final speaker was Thokozani Mabena, who shared his touching journey as a designer coming to America from Zimbabwe. An inspiring creative who currently works for Gensler Portland, Thoko discussed the importance of finding meaning in the work that we do, and to always seek to put people and relationships at the center of our focus. His transformative story, which was previously recorded by TedX, can be watched here. 

Each of our speakers brought insight to our work as designers, as well as shared important messages about how to communicate and work collaboratively with others. They challenged our team to consider ways to be empathetic listeners and positive influences in our industry today.

DESIGN EDUCATION: ACTIVITIES AND EXERCISES

Another key component of Creativity x Collaboration were our team building activities. These exercises brought various groups together to explore ideas such as product design, user testing, listening, creative design practices, and more.

You may have already seen our Egg Drop Challenge shared on social media. This is one of those activities that you may have done in your high school science class. But the Egg Drop Challenge also explores a number of design thinking principles: how to design and prototype an effective container solution that will safely protect a fragile egg as it drops from an elevated surface. We were divided into teams and each received a mystery bag of tools and props. Together we used communication and creative thinking to design egg containers, made of popsicle sticks, pipe cleaners, marshmallows, paper bag scraps, and our favorite mystery item: a jar of peanut butter.

We presented our containers to the judges, Harry, Martin, and Suzanne, before dropping them off of our studio balcony. Some eggs survived the fall, and some didn’t. It was a lesson learned for all of us. Ultimately “Pineapple Express” took home the prize as the most effective as well as design forward egg drop container. 

In addition to the Egg Drop Challenge, we also hosted a range of activities from design trivia to DIY pennant flags, a curated design book library, What’s in Your Wallet? (all about empathetic listening and why we hold on to the things we do), and a field trip to a neighborhood artist and friend, JP Greenwood. 

THE 25TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION

While the meat of our workshops were the speakers and activities, the celebratory moment was our 25th Anniversary Celebration, or Camp RSM. As many of you already know, this year RSM is celebrating 25 years of creative collaboration in the environmental graphic design and place branding industry. Those 25 years have shaped our company into what it is today. And our people are at the very center of that. Under a starry night sky, we went back to our Texan roots (fun fact: Harry, Martin & Suzanne met in Texas!) and celebrated those 25 years with a BBQ dinner, popped the champagne, and in true Texas style, line danced our achy-breaky hearts away. The truth is, we wouldn’t be able to do any of this without you. We’re so grateful for the opportunity to come back year after year and be a part of incredibly inspiring projects. Thank you for making the past 25 years memorable + exciting. It’s a lucky thing, we love what we do.

Cheers to 25 years and definitely s’more adventures ahead!

See more from our workshops on our Instagram and Linkedin!

Cody Clark, Principal and Director of our Los Angeles office, participated in ArtCenter College of Design’s HMCT, Hoffmitz Milken Center for Typography Speaker Series. Cody is a graduate of ArtCenter College of Design as well as former instructor in Graphic Design and Environmental Design for over 15 years. He has built an award-winning career through creative and contemporary storytelling within architectural and public space environments. Cody believes in building projects around a client-informed process which is led by asking great questions, resulting in meaningful and economically successful projects.

Cody discusses his specialization in transmedia, wayfinding and environmental interventions, and his experience challenging spatial storytelling conventions as an educator and designer.

The Hoffmitz Milken Center for Typography provides the tools for community members to celebrate and investigate the evolution of typography’s role in all forms of communication. For more information about the HMCT visit: hmctartcenter.org

Transformational vs. Transactional Storytelling

We all experience a lot of transactional environments in daily life, they tend to be service oriented or poorly designed. They are meaningful in their functionality but what we’re after as a design studio is creating something that’s transformational, how do we create spaces that help people connect and have meaningful experiences. We want to add to their lives, create pride, ownership, and longevity. Our goal at RSM is to design experiences that enrich every part of daily life. People’s experiences are always at the core of what we do, we create connections, activations, and relevancy. We always work within the bounds of who we’re designing for, the context and the conditions. We are writing the recipe for designing to a specific narrative of a project. A recipe that creates impactful and transformational experiences for the range of people that are going to visit each project. There are many contexts that designers are faced with on a daily basis, I am going to talk about five of the core contexts and show projects for each of these.

Cultural Context

The BAR Center at the Beach

The BAR Center at the beach in Venice, California was an existing center from the 1960s that was built for the Jewish community of Los Angeles. The Jewish Federation of Los Angeles is part of a nationwide Foundation whose goal is to share knowledge about Jewish heritage and serves a lot of different functions for the community. We worked to create graphics and a typographic language that can celebrate the culture of the Federation. While communicating the brand of the building it also wanted to be slightly ambiguous, an abstract interpretation. The Star of David was separated into an abstracted graphic form where it becomes deconstructed. We used it as a graphic patterning device that became a veil around the building. This is not a building where you want to have a screaming loud identity so we looked at taking advantage of light. A Jerusalem stone was imported for the project so routing out the monogram with only the natural environment for illumination is the contextual feel this project needed.

The BAR Center at the Beach Project Page

The Buddy Holly Hall of Performing Arts and Sciences

Buddy Holly Hall of Performing Arts and Sciences is in West Texas. We started by building the right typography for the traditional signage of the project but a big effort was creating these amazing experiences within the project. Donor installations are a great storytelling device and in this case we worked closely with the architect. We ended up filling the atrium space with volumetric guitar picks at different scales for different gifting amounts. When you step back this donor wall becomes an image of Buddy Holly on guitar. There’s a symbiotic relationship between the graphic narrative and the architecture, the two are designed together.

The Buddy Holly Hall Project Page

Architectural Context

The Drew

The Drew Las Vegas was going to be a 6 million square foot building with a hotel, casino, retail, restaurants, among other things. Our approach collectively between consultants was to look at it very differently from a storytelling point of view. There has to be a functionality to it that helps the guest experience but you also want to pair that with discovery and surprise. You want to create something that’s memorable. We built on the idea of ground, horizon, sky and how everybody’s association with a space is in one of these three categories. How do we leverage each one of those moments paired with the information, art or media that needs to happen at that particular location. We had the freedom to control how information is woven through the environment, it doesn’t have to be static, it can be digital, it can be ever-changing. Information would disappear and then reappear as it was needed. We wanted things to be surprising and artful so information disappears when there’s no one around and it transforms into art. Then the minute someone is in proximity it turns to the necessary wayfinding information. We were able to rethink how people engaged with typography in really interesting ways.

Historical Context

Fifth & Broadway

Fifth and Broadway is in downtown Nashville on the north side of Broadway, across from the Ryman Auditorium and Bridgestone Arena. We wanted to celebrate the old honky tonks, saloons, and music venues that line Broadway. We do a lot of research to extract a vocabulary of typography, color palettes, and materials that don’t feel foreign to the context. This is clearly a new place, but it’s a place that honors its past.

Fifth & Broadway Project Page

Motivational Context

Platform One @ UnCommons

Platform One is a food Hall that’s part of a larger project on the outskirts of Las Vegas. We did a deep dive on research locally and developed this brand inspired by hobo symbols. There’s a long-standing iconography study of hobo symbols in American culture, we leveraged that to create something more cryptic and uniquely this place. The symbology creates ambiguity, which creates a question, which prompts a story. In this case the applications celebrate individualism, the client even sold t-shirts where everybody could create their own combination of symbols. The brand ultimately changes for each person, they get to apply their personal interpretation of the place. As a transmedia designer we’re assessing how to tell a similar story across multiple platforms. You have to build this diversity of brand and typography that lives in a lot of different contexts within multiple experiences.

Platform One Project Page

Density Context

Post District

Density is a really important context because it sets the tone and recipe for the right visual voice for a given market. Post District is an adaptive reuse project in downtown Salt Lake City. The main building on site was the old newspaper printing facility for the Salt Lake City News. Uncertainty was really important, we wanted to design spaces that felt eclectic. We talked a lot about texture and applying that to different areas of the space. We deconstructed the brand typographically so it would never be seen the same way twice. It was stamped into surfaces and architecture as texture within the environment. It allowed us the freedom to use the brand in vague ways that enhance the experience holistically while maintaining the feel.

Post District Project Page

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Better wayfinding can provide patients and visitors confidence and certainty in healthcare spaces.

With the pace of change in the healthcare market, a focus on creating environments that promote human connection have driven the need for a more unified brand voice and comprehensive wayfinding strategy. Central to this approach is building a framework of user experience points throughout the journey from pre-arrival brand introduction to on-site lasting brand impressions. Examination through this lens allows insight into the experience of patients, visitors and staff and their unique physical, spatial, emotional and mental needs at each juncture, and that can be positively enhanced by a supportive built environment. 

By making the patient and visitor experience more intuitive and less stressful, a comprehensive and strategic wayfinding strategy can alleviate the anxiety that comes with uncertainty.

At RSM Design, our people-centered approach to wayfinding begins by identifying unique experience points within the patient and visitor journey where people engage directly with the healthcare brand by moving through or interacting with the built environment. Each step of that journey is an opportunity to empower patients and visitors with agency and give them choices that inspire confidence and create a more positive experience.

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These “experience points” along the journey fall into three main categories:

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Pre-Visit: Planning & First Brand Impressions

Because a patient’s typical experience with hospitals and clinics begins well before they visit, a good wayfinding strategy is not limited to creating clear information and intuitive visual cues within the space itself. It must also include interactive digital tools such as a wayfinding app and web presence that provide step by step instructions from driving to the final appointment destination. Comprehensive wayfinding also entails working with local municipalities to approve branded experience points on roadways and off-site locations.

These and other wayfinding strategies reinforce the healthcare provider’s brand identity and help realize their goals as they may improve the experience of patients and visitors.

The ideal pre-visit experience is developed alongside the on-site strategy. It not only informs patients and visitors of what to expect on arrival, but also orients them by integrating the wayfinding visual language throughout the site.

Experience Points: Brand, Planning, Travel, Campus Approach

On-Site: An Integrated Approach to Wayfinding

The transition from pre-visit to on-site experience must be as seamless as possible. From the moment patients and visitors enter the property, it should be clear what they need to do next. An effective wayfinding strategy provides a sense of certainty to patients and visitors by considering every aspect of that experience, including site design and architecture, landscape elements, vehicular traffic flow, parking, building identification, lobby orientation, interior navigation, and, notably, cultural context.

At every step, it is essential to empower patients and visitors with choices in how they receive the wayfinding information — even a subtle or unconscious choice can help create a more positive experience. Good on-site wayfinding doesn’t assume a particular “type” of patient. Rather, it accommodates people of all ages, abilities, and demographics by communicating information in multiple ways at once through color coding, alpha-numeric systems and graphic symbols, as well as opportunities for human interaction. This redundancy instills confidence and makes moving through a healthcare campus much more intuitive.

Effective information design is woven into the very fabric of the surrounding environment, and is ideally implemented in coordination with new buildings and/or landscapes. When that is not possible, it should reinforce the architecture and overall planning strategy to create memorable and user-friendly places. When these elements are properly integrated, patients and visitors can quickly and intuitively create mental maps to more easily find their way around large and complex spaces.  

Experience Points: Campus Arrival, Navigation & Parking, Building Entry Approach, Interior Entry Arrival, Destination Navigation & Arrival, Transformative Experiences

Post-Visit: Extending the Patient and Visitor Experience

Why does this extended experience matter? In all of RSM Design’s projects, we hope to combine certainty, variety, and delight. These three design principles create rich, layered experiences rooted in basic physical, emotional, and mental needs. Meeting these needs can create a sense of fulfillment that results in a more positive experience — and a less stressful one.

A wayfinding expert or architectural graphic designer can be most useful when involved early in the branding process. At RSM, we offer branding and design services in addition to our wayfinding and experience design work. This lets us help hospitals and healthcare providers refine their brand identity to improve visibility and the patient experience. These services include creating interactive exhibits, donor recognition, memorable landmarks, community programming, and sensory interaction.

Experience Points: Departure, Next Steps, and Lasting Impressions

The Proof is in the Patient Experience

In healthcare environments, a less stressed patient means a less stressed staff, which means quantifiably better service and peace of mind for everyone involved. At RSM Design, our work is based on proven, evidence-based design practices. We conduct observational research - tracking the movement of patients, visitors and staff through space. We consider everything from circulation, operations, approach, site lines, traffic studies, environmental impact and pedestrian flows. We hold workshops with the community of users and stakeholders to understand their perspectives and needs before arriving at solutions. We have designed a methodology for testing through prototypes and survey users about their experience. We learn what works, what doesn’t, and how best to incorporate those lessons into our final strategy.

We have seen the difference that comprehensive and strategic wayfinding can make firsthand — in both smaller healthcare facilities, such the University of the Pacific School of Dentistry and larger healthcare campuses like the Texas Medical Center. From single clinics to entire healthcare systems, effective wayfinding is essential for creating a truly transformative patient experience.

Looking to transform your patient experience and reinforce your brand strategy? Click here to view our previous work in healthcare design.

RSM Design was honored to join Belzberg Architects, Mathews Development Group and the Jewish Federation of Los Angeles for this collaborative design for the BAR Center at the Beach in Venice, California. We are proud to participate in this spectacular facility that serves the greater Jewish community of Los Angeles. Our team worked alongside this team to develop the brand, wayfinding and integrated donor signage seamlessly into the building. We are excited to share this featured project in the latest Interior Design magazine.

See our work with The BAR Center at the Beach in Los Angeles, California.

RSM Design is thrilled to announce that Sydney Patterson, Senior Designer at RSM Design, has joined SEGD OC as Chapter Chair. Sydney was named co-chair of the Orange County chapter of SEGD, along with Josh Huckleberry and Kathy Guerineau-Shook. SEGD, The Society for Experiential Graphic Design, is a non-profit professional association for graphic, information, media, interaction, exhibition and industrial designers, fabricators, architects, technology integrators, brand strategists, students, wayfinding specialists, and teachers.

Sydney has been involved with SEGD for over 7 years. During that time, she has built relationships with professionals in the environmental graphic design industry, collaborated with other creatives, and attended events across the country. She recently attended SEGD’s Experience Portland 2022 conference with a group of colleagues from RSM Design.