F1rstdesign : SEGD-award

Congratulations: Cologne-based design agency F1RSTDESIGN were awarded the renowned SEGD-Award for their orientation system design for the Customs Office. Whether at the airport, driving a car or in a museum: we only start to notice the quality of signposting in public spaces when they are so bad that we have got lost.

F1RSTDESIGN scrapped the usual methods and materials used for signposting and replaced them with an innovative combination of materials and production techniques, including signs lit using LED. The concept caught the judges eye at the world’s most important design orientated competition the SEGD Awards.

This year the awards were held in front of an international audience at the SEGD Conference in Austin, Texas, where the Cologne-based agency’s concept was presented with one of nine SEGD Awards of Honour, selected from over 410 competition entries. The judges enthused: “This project is the zeitgeist of the 2008 awards. It is the spirit of the time; the spirit characteristic of an age or generation.”

The Washington DC-based Society for Environmental Graphic Design (SEGD) was founded in 1978 and has presented an annual award for innovative design in the outside environment, particularly using graphic design and orientation systems ever since. www.segd.org/awards/2008.html