1. Environmental Graphics
(through history)

2. Environmental Graphic Design (EGD) embraces many design disciplines including graphic, architectural, interior, landscape, and industrial design, all concerned with the visual aspects of wayfinding, communicating identity and information, and shaping the idea of creating experiences that connect people to place.

3. Paris Metro Entrances Designed by Hector Guimard in the Art Nouveau style, these graceful gateways still define the Parisian streetscape. Timeless integration of typography and form.

4. Neon Signs – 1912
Invented by British chemists around 1900 when they electrified the gas krypton, neon soon became a powerful medium for signs. Self-illuminating letters were magical and made signage not only possible after dark, but compelling and even romantic.

5. Times Square s
This popular gathering place came into its own as modern illuminated signs and neon transformed the Great White Way into one of the first immersive media environments.

6. Las Vegas Strip and Downtown s Building-sized neon signs and animated facades came to define a city and reflect a destination lifestyle.

7. Disneyland Signage
One of the first and best examples of graphics playing a major role in place making. Walt Disney used hundreds of colorful signs, icons, posters, and graphics to help define places. Theme parks, museums, and even retail environments followed his lead.

8. Mathematica
Funded by IBM for the Los Angeles Museum of Science and Industry, the Eames Office's hands-on experiential exhibit was the first truly interactive science exhibit. It set the stage for today's intensively interactive museum experiences.

9. Mathematica video

10. Mobil Oil Service Station - 1964
Chermayeff & Geismar's concept may have been the first and certainly the most thoroughly "branded" environment of its day. Seamless integration of graphics, industrial design (by Eliot Noyes), and architecture, with a distinctive logo mark as the centerpiece.

11. NYC Subway Signage Standards – 1966
Massimo Vignelli's intelligent, disciplined system amazed with clarity and detail, transforming a chaotic, confusing experience into an organized framework of signage and visual communications the public could comprehend.

12. Sea Ranch Supergraphics - 1966
Barbara Stauffacher Solomon filled entire walls with colorful stripes and bold shapes, revealing the powerful potential of graphic design as architectural language.

13. 127 John Street, New York – 1968
One of the first high-rise projects to integrate neon and structured typography into the streetscape. Rudolph de Harak added warmth to the Modernist skyscraper and showed how graphics could animate the urban environment.

14. Hollywood Sign Recognized as a Monument – 1973
Los Angeles adopted a 50-year-old advertising sign as its icon and gave it landmark status. Now it's the most famous sign in the world.

15. Atlantic Richfield Plaza Signage – 1974
John Follis' masterwork. The first big-time corporate sign program on the U.S. West Coast. Countless projects (and practitioners) were influenced by the scale and thoroughness. And yes, Helvetica was the typeface.

16. 9 West 57th Street, New York Chermayeff & Geismar's big red sculptural address marker was photographed, celebrated, and copied by designers around the world.

17. Smithsonian Pictograms – 1978
Lance Wyman's pictograms are still relevant today, a visual language of recognizable places. No words were needed. 

18. High-Pressure Laminate for Signage - 1990s
Zoos, museums, and parks have never been the same since the introduction of an image-rich, robust-enough-for-outdoors, and less costly alternative to porcelain enamel.

19. Gurnee Mills
CommArts' tour de force was the first shopping environment driven almost solely by graphic design. At Gurnee Mills, the architecture was in the background, behind graphic storefronts, flying indoor billboards, pop art sculptures, floor-to-ceiling thematic layers, and eyefuls of color, image, and typography.

20. Morgan Stanley Times Square Poulin + Morris created one of the first digital building facades and another great chapter for Times Square. Others followed, leading to today's dazzling, Blade Runner-like must-see destinations.

21. Apple Store – 2001
Sleek and museum-like, Eight Inc.'s retail concept for Apple was the ultimate branded environment. It might be the best example yet of seamless melding of product and place.