Many museum texts focus on management or curatorial aspects of a museum. What many texts ignore is that after the content is created by the curator, the journey of an exhibition has not reached its end. When an exhibition is in the works, an exhibition planning, or development, team will be arranged. When entering an exhibition development meeting in a large museum there will be many parties at the table representing different departments of the museum. There will be members representing education, curatorial, development and various others. However, one of the most undervalued but overworked people at this meeting will be the exhibit designer.
So what does an exhibit designer do? It is a common misconception that the exhibit designers job is as simple as choosing wall colors, organizing graphics and delivering a general layout of the exhibit. However exhibition design is so much more than just “making stuff pretty.” For the most part exhibit designers do not work independently. On any given project, whether it is a simple graphic design for an interactive, or a redesign of an entire exhibition, the designer is working closely with an entire team of people. Some of the most important people that designers work with are curators, educators and conservators. If they work in a larger museum, designers will also collaborate with their fellow designers.
The author with an example of an InDesign graphic for a panel. The panel was originally designed for an Introduction to Exhibition Design class and was on display at the National Museum of Air and Space.
Before the designing starts
The designer’s job, with regards to curators, is to act as an interpreter between the curator and the museum visitors. The curators have spent months, maybe even years, working on developing the research and content for the exhibition. Depending on the circumstances at the time this material is given to the designer, it is in a block text format with a curator’s voice, not necessarily engaging for a broad audience. Hopefully, before it is transferred to the designer it has been looked at by the education department to match the educational tone of the rest of the museum. After that it is transferred to design.
Before officially starting the design process, the designer will sit down with the project manager, curator and anyone else who would like to have an immediate input in the design. From my experiences, while the other members of this team are throwing around ideas and explaining the content, the designer is sketching out possible ideas so that the team can give feedback. Once a basic layout is agreed upon, the designer can go back to their computers and start the design.
When designing
Another misconception is that exhibit designers work exclusively in two dimensional graphic elements or three-dimensional exhibit layouts. The reality is that no matter how large your museum is, a designer will work with both types of design. If a museum is lucky to have a larger design department, they may disperse assignments depending on strength of skills, but it is likely that designers will need to do both 2D and 3D.
As a National Museum of American History design intern, I have been exposed to many different ways of working on design elements. In our design suite, we work exclusively on iMacs. For graphic design NMAH tent to use the creative cloud suite; mostly using inDesign, PhotoShop and Illustrator. For three dimensional design the NMAH uses Vectorworks.
Example design from Vectorworks.
When the designer starts working on a new project, they will first create an initial design which they will often run by colleagues and supervisors before they take it to the next team meeting. Once at the meeting, the team will discuss whether or not the design met the goals of the take away message and also will discuss ways to improve the design. After that a similar process continues with updated designs and meetings until a final design is decided on.
Though this sounds like a simple process, working in a team on any size project, can be extremely difficult. As an intern at the National Museum of American History, I learned this the hard way. During my second week of interning, I was presented with eleven pages of text that I had to somehow make engaging for a diverse audience. As I worked on this project, the other members of the team were often at odds arguing over whether the text or the images were the most important aspects of the interactive. While myself and my supervisor were worried about larger layout issues, the other members of the team were worried about very minor issues.
Common Design Issues
There are many issues in exhibition design but one of the more prevalent issues right now is the desire by curators to fill every empty space in a gallery or graphic panel so that the most information can be displayed. As designers, we understand how hard the curator has worked on this research and text, but the less is more design strategy is often a better approach. The presence of empty space is not a missed opportunity for information, but a space where the visitors mind can relax a bit as to not be overwhelmed with new ideas. Too many objects in a gallery can cause a similar, overwhelming effect. Though many museums are struggling with the fact that they cannot display everything they collect at the same time, over stuffing galleries is not the answer.
First panel of an interactive display designed for the National Museum of American History.
Another common issue revolves around the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). This act prohibits the act of discrimination for peoples with disabilities, but also makes the designers job a little trickier. In our design suite at NMAH we constantly keep an ADA handbook for font sizes and space restrictions nearby. Designers want to make sure that everyone has an amazing experience in the museum, so we have to be vigilant when designing to make sure that wheelchairs can move freely, and that font sizes are legible. As a new designer, on my first assignment I did forget a few of these things, which is why working in a team is wonderful for reminders.
So, Remember
In most of museum careers, you will find yourself at an exhibition development meeting at least once. Remember, designers are not your enemies, we do not want to cut your text out of maliciousness, or remove objects out of pure spite. Designers are there to interpret the hard work of curators, educators and many others to ensure a visually engaging and interesting experience. If I have learned one thing at my internship thus far, please share your vision for the display with the designers from day one. If you have any idea, and share it, the process will more so much more smoothly! Designers are your allies. Yes, designers want to make the information pretty, but we also want to ensure that the visitors find new and unique ways to engage with the exhibit. There are so many more aspects of exhibition design, but these are the main elements.
