From Intent to Impact: How Sign Projects Change from Initial Need to Real-World Use
Thursday, September 17 | Day 1
2:45 PM - 3:45 PM | Session 2B – Room: Loft
From Intent to Impact: How Sign Projects Change from Initial Need to Real-World Use
Building on Ideas That Shine: From Sketchpad to Skyline, presented last year in partnership with SEGD, this year’s session continues the cross-disciplinary conversation, widening the lens from how ideas become physical to how decisions, constraints, and perspectives reshape them along the way.
Bringing together perspectives from design and strategy, materials and specification, and fabrication and installation, this panel examines the decisions, trade-offs, and stakeholder pressures that reshape a sign project as it moves from an initial need into the physical world.
The panel will explore how intent is explained, interpreted, and sometimes altered. It will examine how project structures, timing, and stakeholder decisions affect where influence sits, how value is translated, and what owners, operators, and users ultimately inherit. The session is designed to give attendees a broader view of what other roles in the project chain are balancing, and how better-informed decisions and conversations can protect, improve, or recover value.
The discussion will be conversational, allowing the panelists to respond to one another’s perspectives and experiences, followed by an audience Q&A.
Moderator: Chad Croissant
Co-founder, BES+D (Built-Environment Signage & Décor)
Chad Croissant is co-founder of BES+D, an interior signage and graphic décor company focused on multi-unit residential buildings.
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He brings nearly 30 years of experience in modular building design and design management, working on hotels, condominiums and workforce housing across Canada and parts of the United States. A later chapter co-owning a regional sign and print company shifted his thinking about signage — not an afterthought, but an important part of how a building communicates and supports its users.
As moderator, Chad’s role is to help the panelists share where their perspectives connect, where they differ, and what people elsewhere in the process may not naturally see.
Speaker: Loren Aytona Arena
Creative Director, Entro
Loren Aytona Arena is Creative Director at Entro, where she leads multidisciplinary teams shaping wayfinding and experiential design across civic, transportation, and complex public environments.
Grounded in editorial and information design, with a background in research and communications, she brings a systems-based approach to signage — working at the intersection of people, story, place, and implementation.
Loren works across disciplines to establish clear design direction, navigate competing priorities, and translate strategic intent into experiences that are intuitive, meaningful, and built to last.
Speaker: Dan Glasswick
Vice-President of Business Development, Twilight Signs & Co-Chair, SEGD Toronto
Dan Glasswick is Vice-President of Business Development at Twilight Signs and an SEGD Toronto Chapter Chair.
Before joining Twilight, he worked with EM Plastic, giving him valuable experience with the materials and distribution side of the sign industry as well as insight into what makes a successful sign company.
Dan's job is part matchmaker, part conductor — pairing Twilight with customers worth fighting for, then pointing a room of relentlessly creative people at the work. The result, when it's done right, isn't just a sign or a space — it's a moment someone can't walk past without noticing.
Speaker: Kevin Rourke
Design & Architectural Specifications, Davis Marketing Associates
Kevin Rourke is a consultant and industry advocate with Davis Marketing Associates. His career began in lighting and expanded into vinyl, plastics and architectural signage.
Kevin has built his work around collaboration with brands, designers, architects, manufacturers, distributors and fabricators, based on the understanding that every material and specification decision can create opportunities, constraints or risks for others involved in the same project.
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He helps teams navigate the increasingly complex world of material selection and product specification, guiding decisions around colour, illumination, durability, cost and manufacturability.