 first presenter from Portland, so I'm really excited to welcome you all to Portland, and I'm going to be talking about type in the built environment, so I hope you've all had a chance to get out of the context of this environment and see Portland and learn a little bit about the way we go about things here. So as mentioned, I serve on the board for SCGD, Society for Experiential Graphic Design, and I thought that that's a good place to start this conversation about the type of work that I do. So what is EGD? Experiential Graphic Design is the orchestration of typography, color, imagery, form, and technology to define an experience. So we're a global community of architects, interior designers, graphic designers, fabricators, and product developers working at the intersection of communication design and the built environment. We create experiences that connect people to place and create environments which improve the human experience. So our studio, Mayor Reid, is based here in Portland. We're interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, whatever term you'd like to use. Landscape architecture, urban design, and experiential graphic design. I'm principal in the experiential graphic design studio. We're located just a couple blocks from here. Our studio is on the eighth floor, and we overlook the river and the city that we design for. We're about 28 people right now. I think a few are missing from this photo. The experiential graphic design studio is there in blue, and even within that group, the lovely thing about working in the studio is that each of us come with our own experience and our own interests and backgrounds. So we have those who are specialized or more interested in color and pattern and typography. And my background really is in graphic design and sociology. So this is my way of giving you a disclaimer that I am not a self-proclaimed type nerd. So I'm interested more in kind of the overall effects of our work and how it works in our society. But don't you worry, we have our very own type nerd Cooper here as here today. But typography is a big part of our work, and we work at large scale. Materials, illumination, materials that have some permanence to them, things that are less permanent but really kind of wrap in entire spaces. And all of this work that you're looking at here is our marketing photos that we capture when a project is done, the integration of architecture and typography. But what I'm more interested in is images like these. So about a year ago, we had our anniversary in our studio and we held a photo exhibition called Beyond Opening Day, where we looked back at our work and what our design intent was and what people were actually experiencing with our work. And today being what it is, we have this great resource of social media where people are posting images on Instagram and other sources where they are in a moment where they genuinely want to capture something and we can see the experiences that they've had. And so these are some interns that had a day at Daimler and they got up close and personal with the sign that we had designed to really bring the scale and the materiality of the trucks that Daimler designs to the people who work in the office. So I just, I love this image here. So I want to, although I think social impact of workplace design is really important because we spend a lot of our day at work, I want to talk to you about a couple of public projects and the responsibility that we have as designer when we're designing for publicly funded projects. Projects that become part of our urban fabric and when the audience is the general public. So some things that we try to keep in mind as a studio is as appropriate, timeless, accessible, meaningful and durable. And while some of those don't sound very sexy, I think when they add up altogether, you end up with a project that really nails it or it doesn't. And so as I go through these three projects, I'll keep these things in mind and how they kind of became part of our design dialogue. So the first project opened in 2013 and we were asked by TriMet, the transit agency, to develop an identity for a new landmark here in Portland. A telecom crossing where the city of bridges, and this is our newest bridge, it was the previous bridge, I think it was the newest bridge in 30 years. So the other significant item about this bridge is that it was the first bridge in the U.S. to be mass transit, pedestrian and bicycle only, so no passenger vehicles. Really was a statement of our commitment as a city to sustainability and innovation. The bridge, it connects to innovation districts in Portland so we were asked to think about an identity for it that would be innovative and a dedication plaque. And so we started our process by looking around at examples and we found a lot of brass plaques that were centered typography and it just didn't kind of ooze the innovation that we were thinking of. And I kept coming back to this one example from the Golden Gate Bridge that made me think about the idea of timeless, that it certainly was of a particular moment in time when designers were thinking about certain graphic elements and typography form, but it stands up the test of time because it brings you to this moment of time and understanding what the context was. So I tucked away that thoughts as we went ahead with design and we got to go out onto the bridge while it was being built and here you're looking at plan view. And when they brought us out they said the one thing is that the bridge designer wanted us to stay away from the columns. The columns are really important to the design and that they were thinking that maybe the work would be along the edges of the bridge, along the handrails. But we looked at it and said at the east and the west entrance to the bridge we really need to have this identity mark your entrances to the bridge and it needs to serve our two important users which are the transit users and the pedestrians. And we went back to the client said it really needs to be on that column. But we explained that we were really interested in the idea of a sculptural letter form that took on some of the concept of the bridge design. They described to us that the bridge is designed with no right angles that all of the wind spills off of the bridge and that started to inspire some of our thinking about what that letter form might be. They got really excited about the idea and they gave us the go ahead to move ahead with a design that would be on the column. So we started with agenda as our type face as the base but then quickly moved into 3D modeling to start to understand what happens when this type face becomes three-dimensional and what is its relationship of mass to the mass of the column. We looked at faceting each individual letter but ended with a design that facet is across the face of all of them to sort of play with the idea of the wind spilling across those letters. We're able to model what different times of day and light might look like. There's interpretive panels that are on the columns near that that picked up that same faceted form. We modeled it in software and then also in paper. The typographic work there is really when you have no right angles to your page that you're laying out on what role does typographic layout have became a little bit more lyrical, the spacing between the lines, no lines start aligned with each other. And then materiality, it's always really important to get out to the site and hold up your materials, see how that they interact with the context of the concrete column. These forms ended up being milled from our 3D software out of solid aluminum and then they're powder coated and you can see we're testing in the different light kind of how it reflects the light there from the powder coating. So here it is and it's a final form. I think each letter individually is a lovely object and then together as a group they work quite nicely and you can see in the golden light it feels pretty monochromatic with the column but we learned that different lighting it has really different reactions. So I happened to be out of town when the bridge opened and so it was just killing me. This is something very anticipated by our community and so I was watching Instagram and the telecom crossing hashtag and it just began to quickly populate with people taking their picture in front of the identity. And really it's about their experience of the bridge that's what they're excited about but often our work becomes sort of the marker of that moment in time of being there. But beyond the sort of selfies and pictures with it what I thought was interesting is people really kind of gawking at it or just really admiring the work and capturing things that I really don't did not ever think that somebody would take a wedding photo in front of our work. But there you are. There it is which is quite interesting to see. We never modeled what it would look like with snow. So that was fun to see that somebody got out and capture that in our big snowstorm and all that modeling of light really this is how it is a lot in Portland with cloud cover and no light. But and I thought that this picture is great. It just really captures that Portland of spirit of that's not going to stop my sightseeing for sure. So the next two projects I'm going to talk about opened in 2011 and they're gathering spaces but really quite different. So intuitive way finding to me is really important when we're working in community spaces because it's part of making a space welcoming that if the public can come in and feel that they can find their own way they feel welcomed and that they should be there. So Vancouver community library is Vancouver Washington just 20 mile 20 minutes north of here not Vancouver Canada worked with Miller Hall architects out of Seattle. At the front of the community library we had concepted a large sculptural identity that would mark this civic plaza and we purposely went with just library instead of the formal name because we wanted to be inviting to young kids who are just learning and building their connection to what a library is. So the idea was a sculptural letter form. We went with interstate for our font. We were knew that we were going to be playing around with scale and this is a typeface that scales really well. Also has a works really well and all uppercase or upper lower which is important when you're designing a full sign system. So back to that planter some things that we could look at in this view is sort of the idea of once a letter form has depth there's this relationship between the stroke of the letter and the depth of the letter and legibility and so we did play around with painting the sides a different color to keep the legibility but ended up keeping the monolithic green color and it infills a little bit but we still think that it works quite well. They're fabricated out of steel for durability so kids could actually climb on these and they would hold up which requires a specific paint system to hold up in that condition. So talking about context the librarians were really worried that young readers who are just starting to really recognize letters would come out of the library and see the letters in reverse and that that would be sort of damaging to their letter development. So luckily the landscape architects were in our studio and so we collaborated with them and went through many different planting scenarios and so this is pretty close to after installation you can see the planting is low but the planting is bamboo which is fast growing and its intent was to grow straight up behind the letters and that if it's pruned that it would grow quickly and cover the back of the letters again. So it went back and visited and I don't know if it's a maintenance issue or if it was planting but the bamboo just love those letters so much it grew through and up and around and I actually think it's something that is quite lovely and you couldn't have planned it and I don't think we could have sold that design to the client. But because the plants reach out and touch the letters I just love that it also invites everybody to reach out and touch the letters and engage. So it I think it's quite successful in that way and then they've used it as a backdrop they have a piano there in the summer and I can't tell but I don't think these kids are being damaged by seeing the tops of those letters I think they're doing okay. But the intuitive way finding continues as you come into the library it's a three volume space on the monumental stair we took the collection and printed it on the bottom of the stair the concrete stairs so children nonfiction and fiction. They're masked and painted so you can see the texture of the concrete through and that horizontal text was picked up in a piece that is next to it we did not design it's by Aldridge pairs. But I think it's a nice sort of connection of our work is the literal ascension of the library and theirs is a little bit more lyrical. So there's words like question and wonder and it picks up on the horizontal type and cast the shadow. So the last piece that I want to talk about is homeless shelter that we worked on that also opened in 2011. It's here in Portland but Clark Commons with host architecture again our firm was the landscape architect and experiential graphic design. So this is often the experience outside of a homeless shelter where people are queuing up to receive services and when we joined we're asked to be on this project we weren't sure exactly what our role would be or what we could add to it but homelessness is a real issue here in Portland and it's not a great experience to wait on the sidewalk and then there are these really nice graphic design signs that tell you you're not welcome there and so it's a difficult situation. So the new building is right across the street from the train station. So it is at an entryway to Portland. So as people are coming into Portland it's at the front door. So there's a lot of discussion about how to be a good neighbor and what the design of the building could do so. You can see there that there's a courtyard that was designed really as a place that the queuing up for services could happen off of the street and that's an important part of the design because that did mean that there was a gate to the front of that courtyard that would need to be secured at certain hours and that created a canvas for us to add some work. We worked with the group that runs the program to come up with the content which is quotes from interfaith background that they use in their services. And so it's a way to greet people who are waiting on the street with a bit of dignity and inspiration that they can take from it which you can at different days depending on how the words hit you. This is the courtyard on the right you'll see there's a pattern that the architects develop was an architectural screening. Note that the shadow that it cast has this kind of dappled light and that was something that we talked a lot about about how do we bring these kind of softening experiences to this experience that for technical reading reasons had to be kind of a harsh environment because of safety concerns that they had. So we were asked when we came up with the concept of the type in the gate should the letter forms actually be hand done is that the humanizing part of it that it's a human it's a script. And so we studied that but it gave we lost some things in that. So one thing that we lost is transparency just the technical aspect of holding that letter form there had to be a lot more solid. And the other thing that we lost is accessibility in terms of legibility. There's a lot of people in this user group that are low English speaking or low literacy. And so a legible letter form was really important to us. And so we came back to this concept of a very legible letter form that had more transparency. And it was at this point that the city said this is not an art piece and this is not an architectural element. This is a sign because there's text on it. And so it means it had to meet sign code and the square footage had to become less. And at the moment I thought it was a big failure. But this is the design you can see the text is move up in the architectural pattern continues across the bottom. In the end it's actually very nice that that happened because there's splatter and things that happen at the bottom of the gate and it's nice to have the words kind of up out of that area. So we used Avenue here because of its architectural form we felt like it complemented their architectural pattern nicely. It had the integrity that we needed to hold up the gate. The gate is made out of a weathering steel. So it starts as raw steel and it weathers over time. The attributes are double thick and we pre weathered them so they're rusted a little bit darker. And again we studied the the relationships between the stroke of the letter and the baseline between in this case we chose to keep it quite thin so that your eye would read horizontally. But it also allows your eye to dip and read vertically and make connections between the different quotes. So I would like to read one of the passages. What does love look like. It has hands to help others. It has feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has ears to hear the size and the sorrows of men. That is what love is St Augustine. So obviously this is not a visitor destination. There's not selfies in front of the homeless shelter. But we did find one image that was posted by an Instagram user that was really the most moving. And this is when someone who was homeless is getting their keys to their temporary housing and to be able to do work where we get to be involved just in any way. And that experience is really meaningful to us. So with that I'd like to say thank you.