Archives

Haines, Alaska Environmental Graphics

client: City of Haines
location: Haines, AK | opened: 2011

LCS was commissioned to design wayfinding graphics for the city of Haines, Alaska, especially to help cruise ship passengers upon disembarking. The signs are deliberately overbuilt and the materials are marine industrial, including raw and galvanized steel. In this phenomenal landscape, Mindy’s designs suggest first that visitors BREATHE.

Seattle Culinary Academy’s Digital Donor Wall

client: Seattle Culinary Academy
location: Seattle, WA | size: approx 15′ wide X 6′ high | opened: 2011

This was a deceptively complicated project. Yet, the design outcome is elegant, simple, clean, and tasteful, and takes advantage of modern technology. The materials (frosted glass, stainless steel) reflect the beauty and functionality of the space. The design idea was like Athena from the head of Zeus, fully formed at birth. And it worked out in all of the details. Now we are cookin’!

Cowlitz River Salmon Hatchery Visitor Center

client: Tacoma Public Utilities
location: Cowlitz River, WA |  size: 1,130 sq ft | opened: 2012

When Tacoma Public Utilities renovated the Salmon Hatchery at the Cowlitz River, LCS was hired to design an exhibit about the lifecycle of salmon and to describe the necessity for a hatchery. The outcome is a space where graphics and compelling interactives immerse the visitor in a highly informative and active environment. Mindy conceived of a central exhibit with hundreds of marbles flowing from Hatchery to Habitat to High Seas, through Harvest, and past Hydropower, and the LCS team — along with Dillon Works fabricators — developed a cyclical, hands-on exhibit, helping the visitor to understand the life cycle and perils of being a salmon. LCS also designed interactive exhibits, graphics, videos, projections, and other playful interpretives that frame the story. For LCS, this was supposed to be a simple graphics job, but we could not contain ourselves. (And it still came in on time and within budget.)

photos © Jim Linna, 2011

Winner of 2012 National Hydropower Association Outstanding Stewards of America’s Waters Award.

Lake Union Park | History Trail, Entry Sign, Signage Guidelines, + Miscellany

client: Seattle Parks & Recreation
location: Seattle, WA | size: 12 acres | opened: 2010

Seattle waterfront history takes center stage at Lake Union Park. LCS designed the History Trail there; a series of interpretive monuments, signs, and exhibits focusing on the rich urban culture where the city meets the water. Mindy and her team also designed the information kiosk, park entry signs, push cart, and sandwich sign supports. Furthermore, LCS developed signage guidelines for the park. Working closely with Seattle Parks and Recreation, Seattle Parks Foundation, and Hargreaves Landscape Architects, LCS created iconic design elements responding to the park’s unique micro-environments and fascinating, important history.

Cheshiahud Lake Union Loop Signage and Trail Guide Design

client: Seattle Parks Foundation
location: Seattle, WA | size: 6.2 mile loop

The Seattle Parks Foundation hired LCS to design sign icons and a map for their newly stitched together and renamed bike and walking trail. The 6.2 path passes by 35 pocket parks and celebrates the rich history of Lake Union, Seattle’s central lake. Our solution — a pocket-sized fold-out map with identified points of interest — is a handy, portable reference for the descendants of Chief Cheshiahud and friends.

Epiphany School | Sundial, Donor Wall, Environmental + Educational Graphics

client: Epiphany School
location: Seattle, WA | opened: 2010-11

The renovation of Epiphany elementary school by Miller Hull Architects meant taking out the stops in regard to green design, and Lehrman Cameron Studio was hired to develop and create ways to convey the ideas behind this good work. Our project resulted in a “meter wall” with meter faces at kid face height, and a “visible building construction window”. The exhibits explain what had been done in the building, point toward the future, and get the kids involved. LCS also designed the school’s donor wall and donor labeling, as well as a sundial with interpretation. The sundial was developed in close collaboration with astrobiologist, gnomonicist, Woody Sullivan, professor of astronomy and adjunct professor of history at the University of Washington.

Brightwater Wastewater Treatment Plant Educational Planning + Interpretive Design

client: King County, WA
location: North King County, WA | size: 114 acres (one mile long) | phased openings 2006 – 2011

The King County planners of the Brightwater Wastewater Treatment Plant hired LCS to develop educational opportunities and to design interpretive elements for the mile-long treatment site and system. The intent was to inform the public about wastewater treatment, the water cycle, and conservation, and to ultimately help protect the health of people and the environment.

This was a six-year project for LCS. We worked with a huge team, including an arts master planning group; North Shore teachers’ union; engineers, architects, landscape architects, county administrators, and others. Phase One scope included investigating all potential educational aspects of Brightwater, and then developing storyline, tours, and interpretive elements. Phase Two was the design of site signage and supports. For Phase Three, we designed a sculptural entry sign at one of the project’s transfer stations, using existing sign supports and adding recycled glass tiles made from discarded TV set glass (a reused product by inventor, Bob Kirby). We devised the landscape idea and worked with the county’s landscape designer. For Phase Four, we developed Exhibit Guidelines for the Environmental Education Center.

During the project, Mindy submitted an entry for a Brightwater Wastewater Treatment Plant Team t-shirt design competition and her idea won, unanimously. Understandably, however, few people ever actually wear the shirt.

Oasis Productions Office Designs

client: Oasis Productions, Inc.
location: Seattle, WA | size: 6,000 sq ft | opened: 2008

Over the years, Mindy has designed three offices for Oasis. The offices started small in Pioneer Square, larger near Pike Place Market, and larger still in a building at Lake Union. For the latest iteration, Mindy and her team designed custom doors and windows, furniture, fixtures, furnishings, lighting, and interior elements, and used colors and super graphics reflecting the firm’s brand. Every aspect of this design resonates with this educational event planning firm’s witty, pithy intelligence.

Seattle Children’s Hospital History Wall

client: Children’s Hospital
location: Seattle, WA | size: 800 sq ft | opened: 2007

In 1907, twenty four women formed the Children’s Orthopedic Hospital Association to provide free surgical care for children with orthopedic disorders, regardless of the patients’ race, religion, or gender. One hundred years later, Children’s Hospital in Seattle celebrated its Centennial Anniversary and hired (the mostly female) LCS to convey the hospital’s history in an entryway. LCS worked with the client to develop a graphically composed organization of stories, including multilingual translations. This busy space is populated by anxious parents, hospital staff, and others who can become part of the history’s continuum by leaving their stories at an interactive station. A window wall of historic and contemporary images completes the atmosphere.

Seattle Children’s Hospital Donor Recognition

client: Children’s Hospital
location: Seattle, WA | size: two mezzanine floors of glass walls and columns | opened: 2007

Children’s Hospital in Seattle is an extremely worthy place to donate one’s money, time, and/or attention. It is a remarkable and extremely important place of love, healing, and care. During a capital campaign, thousands upon thousands of citizens, staff, doctors, nurses, and others put their money where their hearts are.  They are now named and thanked with an LCS design on glass that surrounds the hospital’s central entry space.

REI Adventure Land Play Space + Entry Peaks

client: REI

REI Adventure Land Play Space Boulder, Colorado and Round Rock, Texas
location: Boulder, CO and Round Rock, TX | size: 100 sq ft footprint | opened: 2007-2008

This was a rare venture into the retail world for LCS. This play space was designed for four to six year olds who climb and crawl all over the built “mountain”. It is full of discovery and playful, immersive elements. In some ways, it is a hybrid of the fort you built under the dining room table and the backyard tree house. Our first design was a prototype for Boulder, CO and we rearranged it for another REI store in Round Rock, Texas. The mission was to excite kids to venture into the out of doors… with the right tools and gadgets in hand, of course.

REI Entry Peaks
location: Round Rock, TX | size: 26 ft tall | opened: 2008

This wood, glass, and metal composition of mountain peaks serves as dramatic backdrop and landscape in the entry of REI’s “Store of the Future”.

Winner of the Design Award, Association for Retail Environments, 2009, at REI Round Rock, Texas.