Connect with us

Design

SEGD President Jill Ayers Discusses Her Design Evoluion

She is starting new firm, Airspace

Published

on

As an undergraduate student at the Univ. of Michigan, Jill Ayers studied graphic and industrial design. She initially envisioned herself designing product packaging and brand identity, but sought another way to mesh the design disciplines she’d studied. Franc Nunoo-Quarcoo, a design professor who had worked at DeHarak and Poulin (now Poulin + Morris, a legendary NYC EGD firm), introduced Ayers to EGD. At this time (the mid-90s), EGD wasn’t offered as a career path; a young, aspiring designer had to pursue it. As such, she applied to several nationwide, prominent firms. Two Twelve Assoc., David Gibson’s seminal, NYC-based firm, ultimately hired her. After having developed her skills and portfolio, Ayers advanced to become creative director and president of Design360, and will soon open a new firm, Airspace. She’s the current president of the Society for Experiential Graphic Design.

Her EGD – she also uses the term XGD (or experiential graphic design) – methodology begins with “looking to content first.” She said: “What stories do they have to tell? Who are their stakeholders and users? We also review how their competitors brand themselves and overall design trends in their market. Also, we consider whether their development and production approaches are sustainable, both in terms of whether these practices are environmentally friendly, and whether the products are durable.”

She continued, “Overall, environmental graphics have become a bigger part of branding, even in the realms of political and social issues. Clients are well informed of the power of weaving their brand into their environments. They also understand how XGD can be flexible and reactive, which makes it more relevant and unique to an individual person or situation.”

For Ayers’ firm’s work, clients’ source materials arrive in myriad formats: Word documents, .JPGs, .PDFs, .EPS scans and more. She conceded the process might benefit from more direct documentation to clients about preferred file-submission formats.

Although she acknowledges in-process alterations of initial design templates is common, Ayers said value-engineering isn’t necessarily the primary reason. Rather, she said it’s often a matter of a client thinking about a material’s texture or sheen, or a design’s typographic composition, that spurs a client to ask for a redo. Or, of course, a mock-up that makes it more tangible can inspire tweaks.

Ayers noted the onset of economic doldrums in the late 2000s curbed enthusiasm for dynamic-digital signage. Alternatively, she said there’s been interest in tactile environmental graphics, such as mosaic tiles, murals and other manual production methods. At her new firm, she says there will be a continued emphasis on user-experience design, but dynamic-digital signage and other tech-forward environmental graphics will comprise a significant component.

Advertisement

She said, “It’s important to keep your goal of telling the client’s story, and then working in technology appropriately. Content is key.”

Ayers said a successful relationship with a fabricator stems from a partnership developing early, with a signshop having influence with design collaboration and budgeting. Failure to communicate expectations and adaptations will inevitably torpedo the finished product, she said.

 

Most Popular