Old Faithful Visitor Education Center (Happy Holidays)

Work shown was completed while I was a designer at Christopher Chadbourne & Associates.

This vintage Yellowstone ornament, a gift from my dad, holds extra significance because of my work on the design of the Old Faithful Visitor Education Center in Wyoming. The Education Center held its Dedication Ceremony and Grand Re-Opening earlier this year, on August 25.

000 yellowstone COMP_0106_o.jpg

The Old Faithful Visitor Education Center teaches the science behind Yellowstone National Park’s stunning hydrothermal and geological features.

As part of the Christopher Chadbourne & Associates design team, I worked on Design Development, and the Production Services phase. Ernesto Mendoza was the senior graphic designer.

Here’s a project description at SEGD that goes into detail about the design considerations and process, and an article from inhabitat with more photographs.

(The good photographs (i.e. those to the left and below, and the three at the bottom of this post) are by Jay Rosenblatt.)

023 yellowstone img_0150.jpg

I took on a lead design role for the Yellowstone is a Natural Laboratory area, and developed the visual concept, inspired by scientists’ gridded field notebooks. The entire exhibit, and this area in particular, used many interactive elements to explain complicated scientific concepts in an accessible way.

christine-lefebvre-yellowstone-visitor-center-title.jpg
IMG_2944.JPG
christine-lefebvre-yellowstone-visitor-center-lake.jpg
christine-lefebvre-yellowstone-visitor-center-norris.jpg

Here’s an elevation of the Norris Geyser Basin section (the graphic design was tweaked after this):

6.3 Norris Geyser.jpg
christine-lefebvre-yellowstone-visitor-center-interactive.jpg
christine-lefebvre-yellowstone-visitor-center-interactives.jpg
035 yellowstone _mg_3631.jpg
021 yellowstone img_0125.jpg
old-faithful08.jpg
042 yellowstone _mg_3658_o.jpg
old-faithful01.jpg

And because it’s fun to look back, here are some photos from a shop visit at Pacific Studio. It’s always exciting to see designs mocked up like this. (Not as exciting as the final exhibit, of course!) We used a lot of direct print on frosted P95 acrylic, and digital prints applied to sign blank (wrapped with an overlam), for graphic panels.

2010-06-28 12.57.54.jpg

Post updated in January 2021. Broken links have been fixed. This post was originally published at theexhibitdesigner.com on 26 December 2010.