The News 03.16.2021

News from the worlds of exhibition design, interior design, and environmental graphics.

The secret life of museums during lockdown; “we miss our visitors” | COVID study finds that museums are safer than any other indoor activity | Covid-19 has driven millions of women out of the workforce | Smithsonian scales back its $2 billion expansion plan | Congress authorizes two new Smithsonian museums: the National Museum of the American Latino and the American Women’s History Museum — hoorah! | Steal this job: museum exhibit designer | Or build your own museum in a box | Researching a sustainable kitchen countertop | Should we revisit the term “master bedroom”? — and committing to “going into the basement” | I Love Typography’s favorite fonts of 2020 | Lessons learned about team projects | A treasure trove of exhibition design inspiration: past winners of the SEGD global design awards | Benchmarks for online museums | And while poking around the onlines, I found that an exhibit I designed is on Google Street View Arts & Culture! Here are some screenshots from Pacific Exchange: China & U.S. Mail, which was on view in 2014/2015 at the Smithsonian National Postal Museum:

It’s a little “uncanny valley,” but also really neat to see an old friend. (Previous blog coverage, here and here.)

Pacific Exchange, open at the National Postal Museum

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

It’s open! Okay, old news. It opened well over a month ago, on March 6. I had also planned to post about the opening reception, but that was March 20, so — old news there as well. In any case, the reception was lovely, with Chinese food served and tinkling glassware and everyone dressed quite nicely.

Pacific Exchange: China & U.S. Mail is the second exhibit to be on view in the Postmasters Suite gallery at the Smithsonian National Postal Museum. From the exhibit website: Using mail and stamps, Pacific Exchange brings a human scale to Chinese–U.S. relations in three areas: commerce, culture, and community. The exhibit focuses on the 1860s to the 1970s, a time of extraordinary change in China. It also explores Chinese immigration to the United States, now home to four million Chinese Americans. (Thank you to James O'Donnell of the Smithsonian for the above photo.)

Upfront: I am a bit of a stamp nerd. I have a small collection of Olympics stamps, mostly international, from the 1960s and 1970s. (You have to focus when collecting stamps!) So I really enjoyed working on an exhibit about philately.

This was my swan song at Gallagher & Associates. I handled the design myself, from designing the exhibit’s visual concept to laying out production files for all of the graphics. I also designed the exhibit plan and artifact case layouts. Even though this is a small exhibit space, it had more than 100 artifacts, so making [nearly] everything fit comfortably was a bit of a challenge!

The design drawing above is an example of how a case layout looked during design development, and below are those same cases, made real:

Graphics were digital output mounted on sign blank, trimmed to edges, with a matte overlaminate. The wall-mounted and freestanding graphics were backed with 1/2" MDF painted Benjamin Moore “Bonfire” to match the primary exhibit red (Pantone 1795). The freestanding graphics had duplicate panels on either side of the mdf — a panel sandwich which was held in place by adjustable metal sign bases. The Smithsonian Office of Exhibits Central printed and built the graphic components. Blair Fabrication built the case furniture.

Most of the exhibit text is in English and Chinese, a design challenge I enjoyed. In the artifact case below, some of the artifacts were loans that had to be displayed flat. The other half of the plinth has a 15° rise to create a comfortable reading angle.

I arrived at the color palette after some research into significant colors in Chinese culture. I used red and gold as the dominant exhibit colors, with a deeper maroon red for accent. I used a third red, one with pink undertones — red, is the color of prosperity and good fortune, among other meanings — for the Commerce section of the exhibit; yellow, the color of heroism, for the Community section; and blue-green (or qing), to give a feeling of Chinese history and tradition, for the Culture section. I also drew distinctive vector patterns for each section.

The element that most people extol is the group of banners in the entrance. There are three individual banners and they’re more than 20 feet tall! EPI Colorspace printed and installed them. (Install photos here.) They were printed on “Brilliant Banner” 12 mil. polyester banner fabric. The fabric has a very subtle canvas texture that wasn’t what I originally intended — I wanted a silken look for the banners — but the color saturation and printing quality was so good that I went with EPI’s recommendation.

I also designed a few of the related print graphics: the exhibit catalogue, a postcard, and the invitation to the opening reception.

The exhibit has been well-received overall and I’m thrilled with how everything turned out. If you’re in DC between now and January 4, 2015, please check it out!

Post updated in January 2021 with minor text edits and additional photos. Broken links have been fixed. This post was originally published at theexhibitdesigner.com on 26 April 2014.

Pacific Exchange install

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

I stopped by the Smithsonian National Postal Museum to check in on the installation of Pacific Exchange. I’m excited for the exhibit — my last project Gallagher & Associates — to open next week, on March 6.

While I was onsite, EPI Colorspace was there installing the large-format graphics. I’m very satisfied with the quality. Above, one of the EPI crew installs the hanging hardware for the set of three banners that introduce the exhibit. To the right is a fourth banner with the exhibit title.

After the banners were unfurled they were checked and checked again to ensure that they hung plumb. (Success!) The major graphics for this exhibit were in both English and simplified Chinese. Below: The windows to the right of the banners belong to the educational loft; we had some spectators!

Below: A detail of the weight and stitching at the banner’s bottom.

Above: Within the exhibit’s main room there is another dramatic introductory moment, this time produced in fabric stretched over a wooden frame and hung with heavy-duty D rings. There were happily no problems with measurements and everything went up easy peasy — I had my fingers crossed because there are odd cabinets with door knobs and molding behind the graphic. The EPI crew said I must be lucky.

Below: Graphics wait to be installed within the window openings between the gallery and the lobby.

Above: Work zone!—and three of the completed artifact cases. Below: Installed artifacts. More photos to come when everything is complete!

Post updated in January 2021 with minor text edits. Broken links have been fixed. This post was originally published at theexhibitdesigner.com on 27 February 2014.

Gone Solo

I’ve thought about setting out on my own for a while now.

When my partner and I chose to move to a beautiful house in the woods just outside southern DC — which would make commuting up to Silver Spring onerous — the timing suddenly made sense to leave my position as a Senior Designer at Gallagher & Associates.

I am now practicing as Christine Lefebvre Design. I offer services in graphic design, museum exhibition design, and interiors. Over the past eight years I’ve had the opportunity to work on a vast assortment of design projects in various capacities. My experience has been both specialized — in museum exhibition design, all phases — and broad. (Print work? Of course. Website design? Check. Event graphics? Yep.) I am currently available for project-based contract work, so if you are interested in working together, please get in touch! Thank you all for your support, and for following along on The Exhibit Designer.

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Post updated in January 2021. This post was originally published at theexhibitdesigner.com on 11 Feb 2014.

Fun projects for the National Postal Museum

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

I spent the end of summer through early fall wrapping up construction administration work for the newly opened Stamp Gallery at the Smithsonian National Postal Museum. (Designed by Gallagher & Associates.)

I inherited the project from a departing colleague and had very little to do with the design of the exhibit, but I did design the museum’s gallery guide, a fun little project.

I have also been working on a temporary exhibit for the Postal Museum called Pacific Exchange, about China–U.S. relations “through the lens” of stamps and mail. The opening is set for March and I am excited. I’ve really enjoyed the content and being able to give a good amount of attention to a small exhibit. Here’s a sneak peak of the design development:

Post updated in January 2021 with minor text edits. Broken links have been fixed. This post was originally published at theexhibitdesigner.com on 19 November 2013.

The FDR Museum is open!

The Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum was rededicated on Sunday June 29 and is now open to the public. The New York Times published a flattering review and we are thrilled. Here we (the Gallagher team) are at the gala reception, with the museum’s chief curator:

Post updated in January 2021 with minor text edits. Broken links have been fixed. This post was originally published at theexhibitdesigner.com on 3 July 2013.

FDR Museum, part 4: rear-lit and neon

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

To wrap up my series on the design, fabrication, and installation of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Museum, a close look at the first exhibition gallery.

The first gallery sets the stage for FDR’s presidency: the Great Depression. The focal point here is the neon-illuminated “FEAR” wall. Text is silkscreened onto the glass panels and rear-illuminated with LED pads. The red color comes from the custom “UMEMPLOYED” neon letters; the mural image in the back is a black and white photographic print.

The FEAR letters are applied to the rear of the glass. I wanted them to be translucent — to allow the mural image to show through and create depth — and also be as richly black as possible. The fabricators, Explus, provided a variety of production samples to try to achieve the effect I was after. Printing the letters on a transparent film and applying it to the glass, in particular, was unacceptable as I wanted a uniform transparency (no streaks, no dots).

Explus created a self-adhering vinyl by applying Sentinel OptiClear Adhesive to the face of the gel sheet (Rosco Cinegel Neutral Density N.9 Gel Extra Wide) and die-cutting it. I was happy, but the fabricators had some difficulty with cutting and applying the gel sheets. Their graphics manager told me that if they were to do something like this again they would use a standard window tint that has the application adhesive already on it. Here’s the sample:

Turning to the wall opposite:

The background mural is printed on DreamScape, as I mentioned in a previous post. Most of the murals in this museum were applied to backers, framed, and cleat-hung to the wall, but this particular one was applied directly to the wall and its edges captured with flat aluminum strips.

The framed graphics are digital prints with an overlaminate, mounted to sign blank. They were applied onsite to an MDF backer panel and aluminum frame. (The backer and frame are screwed to the exhibit wall; the graphic is applied with VHB tape.) Explus welded the frames’ corners before painting them, and that made a huge difference in the appearance of them. They are nicely finished and high-quality.

Post updated in January 2021 with minor text edits. Broken links have been fixed. This post was originally published at theexhibitdesigner.com on 25 June 2013.

FDR Museum, part 3: almost done!

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

I am back in Hyde Park — installation continues! The exhibits are quickly coming together as the opening nears. Most of the graphics are hung, dimensional letters have been pinned (there are a ton throughout the museum — I went dimensional-letter-happy), and the interactives are being field-tested. I think it all is looking great. Some photos of the A New Deal gallery:

Artifact cases are being filled:

It’s a papier-mâché FDR sphinx!

The World War II timeline is nearly complete (two weeks ago there wasn’t much hung besides the skeleton). What a bear that was to design!

I may have snuck into some New York Times photos while I was onsite. The critic and photographer were there, I was there ... who’s to say. We’ll see.

Post updated in January 2021 with minor text edits and additional photos. This post was originally published at theexhibitdesigner.com on 24 June 2013.

FDR Museum, part 2: installation continues

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

I was back onsite with the Gallagher team at the FDR Library this past week and took more photos of the exhibit installation. It’s exciting to see the various elements go up. The exhibits are dense and layered; it’s a big story to tell in a relatively small space. The exhibits are in the original — now renovated — library conceived by Roosevelt himself so we were restricted to the existing spaces while designing the new exhibits.

Most of the graphics still have a protective film layer and ID label on them. In other places there are backers awaiting graphics, brown paper-wrapped graphics sitting on the floor, and assorted construction detritus. But bit-by-bit it’s going up! And we all know that everything happens in the last week before opening anyway. ;)

Updated, to add a photo of the finished gallery, The Promise of Change:

Updated, to add a photo of the finished gallery, Foundations of a Public Life:

Below, left: These graphics will be installed into the WWII timeline, on the right side of the photo above. They are printed on Laserchrome, which I mentioned in my previous post — and they look incredible.

I also mentioned the DreamScape wallcovering; below is a shot of some installed murals. I think they look good. Once the text panels, dimensional titles, reader rails, etc. go up — it will look great. More, soon!

Post updated in January 2021 with minor text edits and additional photos. Broken links have been fixed. This post was originally published at theexhibitdesigner.com on 16 June 2013.

FDR Museum, part 1: under construction and opening soon

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

For the past couple of years I’ve been working on the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum, in Hyde Park, New York and (holy cow) the public opening is less than a month away. With time dwindling, I am finally sharing some process photos: production samples, shop visits, and installation.

The library has been posting photos of the installation on their tumblr. (2021 update: their tumblr is still going strong!) The photo below comes from there; I grabbed it to highlight the graphic in the background. There are four of these structures throughout the museum, one for each of FDR’s elections.

The “election stats” graphics are silkscreened onto Acrylite P-95 with white vinyl film adhered to the second surface. Silkscreening on P-95 creates a subtle shadow, which at certain angles makes the text appear dimensional. (For this reason, it should also be done with caution.) Here’s a photo of the sample provided by Explus, the fabricator (the installed graphic above is waiting for its red dimensional stars to be attached):

Below, the main story panels, used in the World War II gallery, which I am especially happy with:

They’re built from 5/8" clear acrylic, which has been painted on the front surface with acrylic paint, with a “window” left free of paint. The text is printed onto the painted acrylic surface, and then the photo — a Laserchrome metallic print — is adhered to the second surface of the acrylic, within the window area.

The photo above gives you a sense of the depth and jewel box effect created by layering the photo behind the acrylic. And here’s a peek at the backside of the pane. The aluminum angle frames are painted with Matthews acrylic polyurethane paint:

For wall murals I spec’ed DreamScape wallcoverings in various finishes. Above is another photo from the FDR blog, showing a few installed murals (currently missing their dimensional titles, and the scaffolding structure that will be located in front). I’m pleased with the crisp image quality, especially on the rough textures, such as “Plaster” (below, on the left) and “Mystical” (on the right).

Post updated in January 2021 with minor text edits. Broken links have been fixed. This post was originally published at theexhibitdesigner.com on 3 June 2013.

BoNE Show 2011, the wrap-up

The AIGA BoNE Show — Best of New England [Design] — is a design competition for New England, hosted biennially by AIGA Boston. I was asked to direct the 2011 show, after doing a decent job of designing the exhibit for the 2009 show, and when I said “yes!” without even thinking about it, I found myself responsible for its call-for-entries, judging, meet-the-judges event, awards show, exhibition, website, catalogue ... every little thing involved in putting on a design competition. (It was also the very last thing I did before I left Boston for DC, back in June.)

First I had to create a theme. I worked with George Restrepo to brainstorm a half dozen promising directions. The eventual winner — “Wicked Problems/Wicked Solutions” — was born while myself, George, and a couple other AIGA volunteers on the BoNE committee were discussing the concept of wicked problems and how design is essential to problem solving. Keeping tongue in cheek, I also liked that if people didn’t exactly understand the deeper meaning of the theme, it could also be interpreted as simply “wicked” in the New England sense.

The call-for-entries (above), designed by Kristen Coogan, featured a playful Rube Goldberg-esque problem-solving machine. This visual identity was carried through the rest of the competition and awards show’s graphic pieces, including the website, designed by Justin Hattingh, with technical assistance from Jeremy Perkins.

Below: In keeping everything aligned to the theme, at the meet-the-judges event — held in Boston the evening before judging began — the three judges each gave a presentation related to “wicked problems.”

All event and exhibition photos by Ben Gebo Photography. More event photos, here.

When designing the exhibition, we continued to play with the problem solving theme. Katelyn Mayfield designed a component-based display system: individual displays could be arranged in any configuration to take advantage of our huge gallery space on Boston University’s campus. The displays could then be packed flat and shipped to other venues when the BoNE Show “went on the road” after its run in Boston.

Here is the exhibition, full of guests on the evening of the awards show:

Exhibit displays were located in the front third of the 808 Gallery. Each display was custom-designed for the design project it held and hand-built from corrugated plastic sheets and PVC pipes. Windows and shelves were built by cutting and folding the plastic sheets, by Katelyn and a crack team of volunteers, including BU’s student AIGA group.

WICKED PROBLEMS and WICKED SOLUTIONS were applied to the wall in giant red and cyan vinyl. Winners’ names were laser cut from thick illustration board and the edges of shelves were finished with cyan-colored tape.

Above, left: I commissioned furniture designer Seth Wiseman of ConForm Lab to design and build two sets of benches which could be moved into endless configurations — a human-sized three-dimensional tangram game. The benches were sold during the event auction and the money benefited AIGA Boston. Seth also designed and built the tangram stage, which is in a couple of photos below.

Above, right: For the media-based winning entries, we built a simple kiosk. Joe Morris designed the interface.

Below, left: Dan Watkins (aka Dan the Man Photo) manned the “photo booth.” He also shot all the photography for the show’s catalogue. Below, right: DJs Dan Riti & Kevin James in their sophomore BoNE Show appearance.

Above, left: The silent auction table. We also held a live auction for the big-ticket items. Jason Stevens and Kathleen Byrnes headed the sponsorship drive. Because the point of this entire production was to raise money for AIGA, we tried to get everything for free (or at least on the cheap), and were very thankful for all of our generous sponsors.

And then there was the gorgeous (award-winning, itself) awards show catalogue, designed by George Restrepo and printed and bound by ACME Bookbinding. The embossed covers came in both red and cyan. The keepsake entry ticket was designed by Ira Cummings and printed and foil stamped by EM Letterpress.

And … the awards show! AIGA Boston chapter president Matthew Bacon served as Master of Ceremonies. Trophies were bone-shaped and cast in aluminum (bronzed for the Judges’ Choice winners), with embossed winners’ names. Names were all punched by hand (by Bridget Sandison, who also — along with Juliana Press and Meghann Hickson — took care of receiving and sorting and tracking all the competition entries) using a vintage Dymo label maker. Same way the awards have been made since the BoNE Show’s inception in 1995.

Thank you to Tracy Swyst, AIGA Boston’s VP of operation, who has overseen many many many BoNE Shows, and to the rest of the AIGA Boston board: Heather, Jodi, Colleen, Brandon, Jillfrancis, Diane, Chiranit, Lee, Mat, Jason R, and Sarah, and to the boards from AIGA Connecticut, Rhode Island, Maine, and NH/VT, and everyone else who lent a hand in any way. It was a really great experience.

Post updated in January 2021 with text edits and minor photo edits. Broken links have been fixed. This post was originally published at theexhibitdesigner.com on 24 April 2012.

The News 04.11.12

A compilation of design-related web finds.

Everyone’s been raving about Doug Aitken: SONG 1 at the Hirshhorn — because it’s awesome. I’ve visited twice and would (will) visit at least once more before it closes on May 13. You have to experience it in person.

My former firm, Christopher Chadbourne & Associates, announced their closure. This past summer I accepted a position with Gallagher & Associates, and moved to Washington, DC | In memory of the 100th anniversary of the Titanic’s sinking on April 15, dozens of exhibits about the ship have opened, including the the world’s largest, in Belfast; also: Fire & Ice: Hindenburg and Titanic at the Smithsonian National Postal Museum; Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition, everywhere; Titanic at the South Street Seaport Museum in New York, NY | The Union Pacific Railroad Museum’s Building America traveling exhibit is located in a traveling train car, naturally. The entire museum opens in Iowa in a month | Part 1 in a series of articles describing exhibit design, from Mark Walhimer at museumplanner.org | Blueprint, a guidebook to build your own history museum in the 21st century, from The Museum of the Future | Pinned Inspiration: ice ceiling; purple-sided lightboxes; German Expressionism at the MoMA; education center at the San Diego Children's Museum.

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Post updated in January 2021 with text edits. Broken links have been replaced with archived URLs, courtesy of archive.org. This post was originally published at theexhibitdesigner.com on 11 April 2012.

The News 05.01.11

A compilation of design-related web finds.

Creating Material Lab at MoMA | Design to Preserve by the Cooper-Hewitt | Coming soon to the Mall? National Women’s History Museum Makes Another Push Toward Existence and National Latino Museum Plan Faces Fight (hint: probably not) | “Jurassic Park meets Buckminster Fuller” — a zoo that imagines a reunited Pangea | MoMath, the National Museum of Mathematics in New York, is raising funds | Vertical Urban Factory at the Skyscraper Museum in New York (slide show here) | Architecture in Uniform: Designing and Building for the Second World War at the Canadian Centre for Architecture | The World’s Largest Dinosaurs at the American Museum of Natural History looks amazing (slide show here; I love photo 3!) | La Plaza de Cultura y Artes, Mexican American cultural center in LA, “screens in a public alley space that both bring the stories out of the museum and draw passersby into the experience.” More in this article from GOOD | The National Museum of American Jewish History opens in Philadelphia | Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center opens in Skokie (review and slide show) | The Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles (review and slide show) | The MBTA steps up its “See Something Say Something” campaign, and in Boston’s North Station:

AND an upcoming opening!

Conner Prairie Interactive History Park is opening a new exhibit, 1863 Civil War Journey: Raid on Indiana, in June. Part theater, part living history museum; the interactive experience is centered around a recreation of a Civil War-era town complete with homes, a general store, and a schoolhouse. As part of the Christopher Chadbourne & Associates team, I designed the graphics located in the schoolhouse, where the lessons of the park are pulled together.

I designed a tabletop graphic for a touch table that houses three monitors. It’s meant to appear as though it were strewn with historic maps and military tactical manuals. I also designed a flipbook that holds background information about the park’s characters, in the style of a scrapbook; and a large “chalkboard” wall graphic inspired by Civil War broadsides and illustrated with a map and hand lettering. These were fun graphics to design, geared toward families and school groups.

Post updated in January 2021. Broken links have been replaced with archived URLs, courtesy of archive.org. This post was originally published at theexhibitdesigner.com on 1 May 2011.

Say Something, the wrap-up

I was honored to be involved with the Say Something Poster Project* by lending my exhibit design services to the first ever Poster Show, a fundraiser for Boston-based nonprofit The Home for Little Wanderers.

This was a case of less being much more. Initially I started with grand ideas to incorporate elements from the website branding into the three-dimensional exhibit space, but gradually I whittled down the exhibition design to its essence, to give the 25 poster finalists all the attention (and to make the installation manageable).

Posters were hung using 1.25" bulldog clips held to the wall with L pins. Labels were laser prints mounted to black illustration board and attached to the wall top and bottom with L pins. (And because I’m quite particular, you bet all the white paper edges were hit with a deft stroke of gray marker.) The large script title (“the poster show”) was drawn by illustrator Chris Piascik. I put it on the wall in contour-cut vinyl.

Guests voted for their ten favorite posters from the 25 finalists on view at the event. I designed the voting sheet.

Below is Mat Budelman, with his poster Think Half Full, one of the winning entries. Kudos to the finalists and winners, the volunteers, and to organizer Jason Stevens. Ben Gebo shot these event photos, and was also, incidentally, the photographer for the event I organized for Friday, AIGA BoNE Show’s “Meet the Judges.”

Post updated in January 2021. Broken links have been fixed or replaced with archived URLs, courtesy of archive.org. This post was originally published at theexhibitdesigner.com on 4 March 2011.
*Archived website leads to the second Say Something Poster Show; the first is no longer available online.

Talking about the BoNE Show

February, keeping me busy.

This Friday February 4 I’ll be in Providence for the AIGA Rhode Island event 20|11 reflect | respond | resolve | DESIGN — at which local creatives speak their minds for 60 seconds each. I imagine that in those 60 seconds I will have time to stand up, introduce myself, thank the chapter for inviting me to participate and with what time is left, ask if there are any questions. Actually, I’m going to talk about the theme of this year’s AIGA Best of New England (BoNE) Show, “Wicked Problems. Wicked Solutions.” Friday also happens to be the BoNE Show regular deadline; so New England designers: enter your work now. (Or aim for the February 11 late deadline.) The competition accepts all visual design work — including environmental design.

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Post updated in January 2021 with minor text edits. Broken links have been fixed or replaced with archived URLs, courtesy of archive.org. This post was originally published at theexhibitdesigner.com on 2 Feb 2011.

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.

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.)

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.

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

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.

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

Old Faithful Visitor Center’s grand opening

I took a trip out West last week, with my colleagues from Christopher Chadbourne & Associates, for the grand opening of the Old Faithful Visitor Education Center in Yellowstone National Park. Exciting! Post soon!

I have a somewhat hefty backlog of content for the blog. Some of it dates to when we were wearing knit hats and snow boots. I hope to have it all up asap.

Update: I got most of them. Changing Earth | Electricity | State of Deception | Cars, Culture, and the City | America’s Mayor | Samurai in New York | New England Habitats | Mass MoCA | Old Faithful Visitor Center

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Post updated in January 2021. Broken links have been fixed. This post was originally published at theexhibitdesigner.com on 29 August 2010.

I love the Infantry Museum

I love the infantry because they are the underdogs. They are the mud-rain-frost-and-wind boys. They have no comforts, and they even learn to live without the necessities. And in the end they are the guys that wars can’t be won without.

— Ernie Pyle

This past week I went down to Columbus, Georgia to see Christopher Chadbourne & Associates’s National Infantry Museum at Fort Benning. I worked on this project as a junior designer — I helped to finalize design drawings and produced final graphic design files. (Brent Johnson was the lead exhibit designer, and Jeff Stammen the lead graphic designer.) I suppose I cut my exhibit design teeth on this one. I learned SO MUCH about the design process while working on this. And I know all these graphics so well — it’s thrilling to see them realized, and in person. It was an honor to work on this museum.

Post updated in January 2021. This post was originally published at theexhibitdesigner.com on 2 May 2010.

The News 01.19.10

A compilation of design-related web finds.

L.A.’s Natural History Museum to receive $1-million grant for new permanent exhibition | Rising Currents: Projects for New York’s Waterfront — I’ve been following with interest the progress of the program and upcoming exhibit on the MoMA/P.S.1 blog | Towards a New Mainstream? On 27 January 2–3pm EST, a lecture by Gregory Rodriguez exploring demographic change in the Americas, cultural transformation, and the future of museums | Color Identifying System for the Color Blind | An Increasing Craving for Experiences; there has been a lot written lately about experience-over-stuff — hello, museums! | Light Touch interactive projector turns any flat surface into a touchscreen | An Architect’s Philosophy of Photography | Steffen Dam: Specimen Panels These are beautiful; very “natural history museum” | Barton’s Bonbonniere, From Architectural Forum c. 1952 — I love it! What a fun space.

AND NOW, something from the portfolio:

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

This time last year (January 17, 2009), the Tampa Bay History Center — designed by Christopher Chadbourne & Associates — held its grand opening in downtown Tampa, Florida. I worked closely with the project’s senior graphic designer Jeff Stammen on design development.

(Photo above and first three photos below, courtesy Tampa Bay History Center.)

I took a leading design role for the timeline (Your Tampa Bay) and the War Stories gallery. Below is my sketch of the War Stories gallery, and below that, a photo I took during installation — hence the empty case.

All the graphics in this museum were designed with both English and Spanish text. I love the challenge of designing multilingual graphics.

I was also responsible for Construction Administration, and supervised the exhibit installation. I love shop visits, site visits, inspecting fabrication samples … all of that. What happened with the Tampa installation was a little … let’s just say, complicated. The local fabricator, Creative Arts, was fantastic and saved the installation day in a lot of ways. I ended up effectively living in a hotel room for a couple weeks during the tail end of installation — much longer than my trip to Tampa was supposed to be. It was quite the learning experience. In hindsight, I can say I had fun.

(Photo above and photo below, courtesy Tampa Bay History Center.)

Post updated in January 2021. Broken links have been fixed or replaced with archived URLs, courtesy of archive.org. This post was originally published at theexhibitdesigner.com on 19 January 2010.

A thought or two on curved reader rails

I have been working on some curved reader rails and I feel for anyone who has to design them regularly — they involve advanced geometric wizardry that can make your head spin. (Or not ... but actually, yes, they are tricky.)

Below are two curved reader rails in the Ocean Hall at the National Museum of Natural History in DC. On the left is a rail that looks as though its graphics were not laid-out correctly; I’d guess that the text blocks and graphic elements are angled, but not CURVED to match the round rail edges, which makes the graphic look a little wonky. Look specifically at the text “Meet Phoenix” — see how it angles toward the text block below it? (But how cute is that whale illustration?) On the right, from the same exhibit, another curved rail. It’s a much simpler design, and it works: just two lines of text, set on a baseline curved to the radius of the rail.

Below is a reader rail that I designed for the National Museum of the US Army in Fort Belvoir, Virginia. (We — Christopher Chadbourne & Associates — are still in Design Development so text and images are not final.)

It will ultimately surround a circular, glass-enclosed diorama. Every line of text is on its own track, curved to the radius of the rail; in fact, all graphic elements, including lines and images, have horizontal lines curved to that radius. It took a long time to lay this out.

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Update, 2021: The museum is now open (!!) — but also temporarily closed due to Covid-19 — and you can see the round reader rail and diorama in the photo of the Cold War gallery on the NMUSA website.

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Post updated in January 2021. Broken links have been fixed, replaced, or replaced with archived URLs, courtesy of archive.org. This post was originally published at theexhibitdesigner.com on 10 January 2010.