When we see an exit sign on the interstate, we don’t just read the words; we intuit its green color, the well-spaced lettering of its sans serif Highway Gothic font, and the rectangular shape of the sign itself, all reminding us to slow down as we leave the highway. This idea—that the “architecture” of information matters—was first put forth in 1975 by Richard Saul Wurman, the architect and polymath best known as one of the founders of the Technology, Entertainment, and Design, or TED, conference. Although road signs, maps, diagrams, and other forms of public communication are often thought of as means to communicate textual information, Wurman and his co-writer, designer Joel Katz, argue in their seminal essay, “Beyond Graphics: The Architecture of Information” that “our interaction with our environment is largely sensory rather than intellectual.” Through better design, architects help create “informed, self-informing citizens,” able to participate in the planning process, in part, because they learn to see like a planner.1
One of Wurman’s first attempts to show the relationship between information, design, and architecture came in the form of a 1967 experimental film made on behalf of the state of North Carolina. The film, titled The Piedmont Crescent, was designed to boost state regional planning efforts that began in the 1950s. Intending to help planners, elected officials, and ordinary North Carolinians imagine a megaregion that, more than fifty years later, is now the core of the state’s economy and population, The Piedmont Crescent is an early illustration of Wurman’s interest in linking architecture, urban planning, and techniques of visualization. The film is both pragmatic and experimental, equally interested in giving the past its due and imagining a future. While the film was a small part of a multifaceted planning effort, it anticipated a world in which North Carolinians thought of themselves as citizens of an abstract region (e.g., “The Triangle”—Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill), not just a town or county.
Although The Piedmont Crescent was not completed until 1967, work on the film began much earlier, as part of a broader initiative to use cinema as a tool for government. In January 1961, Terry Sanford, an ambitious liberal Democrat, was inaugurated as the governor of North Carolina. Because governors were limited to a single four-year term, Sanford wanted to build broad public and institutional support for his agenda in hopes that his initiatives would continue after he left office. Like other politicians of the era, Sanford was particularly interested in using film and television to persuade the public to support his ambitious political program.