UC Designer and Author Keynotes National Signage Conference

Social, economic and technological (SET) analysis of signage can be the means for innovation among environmental graphic (signage) designers, planners, marketers, municipalities and the business community.

That will be the message delivered by the University of Cincinnati’s

Craig Vogel

  an internationally known designer, educator and author who currently holds an interim appointment as the Terry Fruth/Gemini Chair of Signage Design and Community Planning in the university’s College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning.

In that role, he will deliver the keynote address at the Oct. 10-11 National Signage Research & Education Conference (

NSREC

) to be held in Cincinnati, at the Kingsgate Marriott on UC’s East Campus.

Central to his address will be presentation of a recent case study in which UC planning students create signage and wayfinding options for Bidwell Park, a more than 3,600 acre municipal park located in Chico, Calif., that stretches 11 miles in length.

Because of its size and length, the park encompasses typical play fields, a golf course and recreational facilities adjacent to Chico but stretches to also include undeveloped wilderness preserves in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas.

The many uses and varied communication needs of the park provided for an ideal learning opportunity in terms of signage development, according to Vogel, and UC undergraduate and graduate design and planning students worked on just such signage concepts in spring 2012, focusing on the area’s geographic, historical and cultural layers in order to create appropriate options for the municipality.

Said Vogel, “The park has outdated signage in part because the cultural needs of the community are different than they were decades ago. For instance, the community is quite diverse and multicultural now. It’s necessary to understand the interconnected complexity of space and users in order to create effective communications. That had never been yet tried in this park’s graphic communications.”

A handful of students continue to work on the project and will make a final presentation to the Chico City Council in December.

In leading this hands-on studio project related to Bidwell Park’s signage, Vogel is returning to his roots in a way – at least when it comes to signage.  As a graduate student, he worked in the signage industry in New York City for several years, specifically for Arthur Blum Signs in Brooklyn where he designed, completed technical drawings, fabricated, sold and obtained variances for commercial signage.

Recalled Vogel, “I loved every minute I worked in the signage industry in New York. It was such a wide range of experience, with every facet of design and business involved. I learned the tremendous impact signage has on the world, even though that impact is not well understood outside of the signage industry itself.”

• Read about UC research to be presented at the conference by James Kellaris, the James S. Womack/Gemini Chair of Signage and Visual Marketing in the UC Carl H. Lindner College of Business. Other UC presenters at the conference include Jeff Rexhausen, research associate in the Economics Center for Education & Research, and George Vredeveld, professor of economics. They will speak on the topic of “The Economic Value of Signs Research Study.”