Sitting in on the sessions at the Society for Environmental Graphic Design's (SEGD) annual conference in San Diego last month, we were struck by how similar some of the concerns and discussion points were to those of other designers. Environmental graphics serve a crucial role in defining the character and navigability of public spaces -- especially big, complicated ones like museums and hospitals -- but frequently go unnoticed unless they're absent or poorly designed.

Imagine our joy, then, at the notoriety now being accorded SEGD Fellow David Gibson, not only from the professional organization that honored him last month, but from the design world as a whole. Gibson's recently released book on signage and wayfinding (pictured above) is the subject of an excellent interview in the May issue of Metropolis, and his studio, Two Twelve Associates, has been racking up awards over the past few years for its groundbreaking approaches to signage and wayfinding for clients like Radio City Music Hall , Johns Hopkins Hospital, and the City of Baltimore. The scale of such tasks both excites and unsettles us -- imagine your field of expertise requiring design solutions for an area hundreds of acres in size.

Signage and wayfinding in general seem to be gaining a higher profile in the US of late, perhaps as part of renewed interest in urban infrastructure, or a greater focus on alternative transportation brought on by economic and environmental concerns. This article in particular, by Alissa Walker for Fast Company caught our eye last week, pointing out how something as humble as cycle-oriented street signage can dramatically alter the viability of cycling in a city (Los Angeles) not historically known for its bikeability. It's just a proposal at the moment, by designer Joseph Pritchard, but it's got the advantages of clarity, low implementation cost, visual differentiation, and if all the above is any indicator, good timing.