RSM Design Wins SEGD Honor Award

RSM Design is proud to receive an Honor Award in the Placemaking category of the 2026 Society for Experiential Graphic Design (SEGD) Global Design Awards for La Nube STEAM Discovery Center in El Paso, Texas. Of 272 international entries, 31 projects were recognized, and only 11 received Honor Awards. The RSM Design project team was led by Harry Mark, FAIA, and KK Closuit. The award was announced at the recent Society for Experiential Graphic Design National Conference in Kansas City, where KK accepted the award on behalf of the RSM Design team.

The identity, wayfinding, and placemaking within La Nube evolved through close collaboration with the El Paso Community Foundation along with architects Snøhetta and Exigo. Working together, the team shaped an environment that feels rooted in its sense of place, where the experiential graphic design has a symbiotic relationship with the architecture. Congratulations to the entire team on this achievement!

In El Paso, Texas, the sky defines the experience of place: expansive, luminous, and ever-present. Set against the horizon at the edge of downtown, La Nube STEAM Discovery Center rises as a new educational landmark shaped by imagination and possibility. The 70,000-square-foot center is rooted in the cultural identity of a city on the US-Mexico border, where El Paso and Ciudad Juárez share two languages, the same river, and the same sky. RSM Design’s bilingual experiential graphic design interventions make a clear declaration: this place belongs to its community.

Named for the Spanish word for “the cloud,” La Nube reflects openness and curiosity through the sculptural form sculpted by the architects. Its dynamic silhouette contrasts with the surrounding urban fabric, creating a visual dialogue between sky and street. Inside, the geometries continue, paired with bold colors and hands-on exhibits that blend play with discovery across Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math (STEAM).

Placing a sign on a “cloud” with a dynamic façade that mirrors the changing sky was both an opportunity and a challenge. RSM Design’s solution was a blade sign that feels light and atmospheric, attached with a delicate touch so it appears to float on the building’s surface.

In close coordination with the architecture team, RSM Design drew on the principles that compose the building forms to implement a unique graphic layer of engaging mathematical formulas. Placed at key touchpoints and vertical cores within the building, this educational layer shows the forces at work in the architecture and engineering, so the building itself becomes a learning lesson.