Leadership

William Bardel – Principal

Luminant Design and its project teams are led by William Bardel, an information designer with 20 years of experience across in architecture, engineering, software and graphic design industries.

William holds a BA in English from Kenyon College, Ohio and a Masters in Communication Planning and Information Design from Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh. He also studied information design and typography at the Rhode Island School of Design.

Before founding Luminant Design LLC in 2010, William worked at or consulted for notable firms and institutions, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), The Hillier Group Architects (Princeton, NJ), Resort Technology Partners (Avon, Colorado), Joel Katz Design Associates (Philadelphia), and Mijksenaar Arup Wayfinding (New York).

William’s past design work includes numerous infographics for publications and organizations such as the Nature Conservancy. He has designed building identity and wayfinding signs programs for many mixed-use high-rise Manhattan properties in New York City , transit sign programs for Philadelphia (SEPTA, PATCO), San Francisco (BART), Dulles International Airport, and U.S. Land Border crossings. Pedestrian wayfinding sign programs include Philadelphia, Portland Oregon, Omaha Nebraska and Washington Monument Park (D.C.), Vanderbilt Park (Greenville, NY), and the Woodstock Day School (Saugerties, NY).

William is also a design consultant for the Moon Ark project, a cultural time capsule scheduled to launch to the moon in 2021.

Lecturing

William has guest lectured at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. He has also lead design thinking workshops at leading conferences, institutions and businesses including CHI (ACM), UX London, IxDA, GDC (Manitoba, Canada), Carnegie Mellon University, and InTouch Solutions, Pittsburgh Corning Glass, and Daimler Trucks USA.

Publications

William is the Co-author of the book Drawing Ideas: A hand-drawn approach for better design published by Watson-Guptill in 2013, a Penguin Random House imprint. He is the author of the highly regarded visual summary guide Signage and the 2010 ADA Standards for Accessible Design. His writing on visual cognition is a chapter in the book "Mind Hacks", by the O'Reilly Press (2004). William’s infographic and diagram work is featured in the books "Best Informational Diagrams II" and "Informational Diagram Collection" by PIE Books in Japan (2004 and 2009).