Today we celebrate our very own! Today we express our gratitude to our clients, our friends and our adversaries. We attribute our success to all of them. Thank you!

New products are key to Skyline’s growth. Cross-functional teams of marketers, designers and engineers have developed a method for success and the results have been imposing. In both 2009 and 2010, Skyline was honored with Buyers Choice Awards, which recognize best new exhibiting products. Earlier this year, Skyline also won 2 of 6 Product Design Awards at EXHIBITOR2010, the industry’s largest event. Now, we receive the coveted 2010 Event Design Award in one of the industry’s red-hot categories – Best Modular + Custom Environment – for a Eurocopter exhibit at the 2010 Heli-Expo in Houston, Texas. A perfect Thanksgiving!

“Gratitude is the inward feeling of kindness received. Thankfulness is the natural impulse to express that feeling. Thanksgiving is the following of that impulse.” Henry Van Dyke (American short-story Writer, Poet and Essayist, 1852-1933)

If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change.
~ Gautama Buddha, circa 563 B.C.E

No one understands this miracle in one, more so than trade show designers and exhibit visual designers. The perennial philosolphy "Pick the best and use it everywhere" is usually the foolproof rule of exhibition and gallery graphics. However, it would be impossible for an institution with rich heritage and artifacts ranging from hundreds of years to focus on ONE. For exmple, British Galleries at the V&A contained 400 years of the finest British furniture, art, and interior design ever collected. Picking one was going to be tough. So Michael Johnson picked few instead and let the visitor imagine what wearing, leaning on, or snogging in front of all these treasures might feel like.

Every artist have slightly different list of principles. Usually, the four below works for me.
Emphasis - "Center of Interest." It is about dominance and influence. Most artists put it a bit off center and balance it with some minor themes to maintain our interest. Some artists avoid emphasis on purpose. They want all parts of the work to be equally interesting.

Harmony - As in music, complementary layers and/or effects can be merged to produce a more attractive whole. The composition is complex, but everything appears to fit with everything else. The whole is better than the sum of its parts.

Unity - "When nothing distracts from the whole, you have unity." Unity without variation can be monotonous. Unity with diversity generally has more to offer in both art and in life. Of course, some very minimal art can be very calming and at times even very evocative. A simple landscape can have a powerful effect.

Opposition - This is my favourite. Usage of contrasting visual concepts. That plains of Dakota with "big sky" landscape becomes very dramatic and expressive when a storm builds in the southwest.

The Tree of Life is venerated symbol in nearly every culture. With its branches reaching into the sky, and roots deep in the earth, it dwells in three worlds- the heaven, the earth, and the underworld, uniting above and below. It is a symbol of abundance, reflecting the immortality of the cyclic ebb and flow of cosmic life. It is a union of the feminine and the masculine. Artists and Philospers have talked about it since ancient past. "It is a universal symbol, which transcends time and space and seek out deeper reality, expressive of the universal consciousness." Psychologist Carl Jung calls our "collective consciousness".

I believe, when the India Pavilion was designed for the Shanghai Expo 2010, the Tree of Life played an important motif in the engineering and the architecture of the space. The highlight of the pavilion was dome structure, modeled after Sanchi Stupa, an ancient Buddhist temple built about 24 centuries ago. In a nod to sustainable architecture, the dome's roof is covered by grids and wires that allow herb trays and solar cells to be mounted on it. The solar cells and wind turbine generates enough energy for the self-sustaining show exhibit and the herbs acts as a carbon sink purifying the surrounding environment. The 115 foot-diameter structure is now considered the world's largest bamboo dome.

After having a very successful launch, Envoy is about to set a new benchmark in the avenue of pre-fabricated custom modular exhibits. It empowers trade show exhibitors with the unrivaled advantage of a clean, contemporary look in a lighter-weight system. The design is in keeping with the trend of today's most in demand brands.

I believe, this trend in design was set in 1998, when Volkswagen introduced the New Beetle. It ushered in the age of Curvilinear Coordinates. Apple, Herman Miller follwed suit.

The Beetle is less of a four wheeled machine and more a piece of "kinetic sculpture" as it glides down the freeway. Purposefully  different from the other cars it is a synergy of geometry and nostalgia. It is an eloquent expression of cohesion and form. The body fits neatly into the top half of a golden ellipse. The side windows repeat the shape of the golden ellipse, with the door resting in the square of the golden section rectangle. All the details of changes in surfaces are tangent golden ellipses or circles. The very detail of placement of the antenna is at an angle tangent to the front wheel well.

The golden ellipse is embedded in a golden rectangle construction diagram. The body fits in the top half of this golden ellipse. The major axis of the ellipse aligns with the body just below the center of the tires. A second golden ellipse encloses the side windows. The ellipse is also tangent to the front wheel well and tangent to the rear wheel. The major axis of the ellipse is tangent both to front and rear wheels....Source: Geometry of Design. In May 2010, Volkswagen announced that production of the current body of the New Beetle will cease in 2011. A redesigned model will replace it. If history is any guide, perhaps we will see the next step in deseign evolution.