Washington, DC - the Society for Environmental Graphic Design (SEGD) announces 19 winners in its annual Design Awards Program, recognizing excellence in environmental graphic design. The 19 Merit Awards were selected from more than 300 entries submitted from around the world, including Taiwan, Japan, Argentina, New Zealand and Australia.

Art gallery signage, theme park identity graphics and an urban mural represent the diversity in the field.

Extensive public wayfinding sytems are among the winning projects, with Two Twelve Associates's work for the Chicago Parks System, and HOK's Laredo International Airport in Texas. Museums and libraries are well represented, with seven projects coming from institutional/cultural environments.

Also, among the winners were three temporary projects (Witnesses, a performance-based community art project; Construction Barricades for Grand Central Terminal; and Construction Barricades for the Brooklyn Museum of Art). Two reports are honored as award winners: the first is a comprehensive wayfinding and signage analysis for Dallas/Fort Worth Airport; and the other is a student project, which examined how the sense of touch helps define our experience of the spaces around us.

The 1999 Design Awards Program winners are:

Chicago Parks Wayfinding and Signage, Two Twelve Associates, New York
Farnsworth Art Museum: Identity and Environmental Graphics, Arrowstreet Inc., Boston
Hall of Biodiversity, Ralph Appelbaum Associates, New York
Kidpower! A Science Playground, Chermayeff & Geismar, New York
Universal City, Selbert Perkins Design Collaborative, Boston and Santa Monica
Auckland City Art Gallery Signage, Peter Haythornthwaite Design, New Zealand
Brooklyn Museum of Art, Pentagram Design, New York
New York Public Library Jill Kupin Rose Gallery, Chermayeff & Geismar, New York
The Moveable Museum, Lee Skolnick Architecture + Design Partnership, New York
Briggs & Riley Prototype Store, Gensler, San Francisco
Donut King, Lorenc Design, Atlanta
Sony Playstation E3 Exhibit, Mauk Design, San Francisco
Murals at 22nd and Walnut Streets, Susan Maxman & Partners, Philadelphia
Grand Central Construction Barricades, Two Twelve Associates, New York
Laredo International Airport, HOK Graphics, Dallas
Witnesses, Community Architexts, Chicago
An Introduction to Hidden-Image Murals, Piotr Adamski, New York
Dallas Fort Worth Signage Masterplan, Carol Naughton + Associates, Chicago
Please Touch, Elizabeth Hiller, Springfield, VA

The four other jury members were:

Paola Antonelli, MoMA, New York
Garry Emery, Emery Vincent Design, Australia
Aura Oslapas, IDEO Product Development, San Francisco
Erik Spiekermann, MetaDesign, Berlin, London, San Francisco