Three Weeks to Go!

March 4, 2013

This is my favorite part of exhibit design. It’s that time in the process when all the planning and designing starts to come together.

Well, as you can see from how it looks this week, our fabricators, Roger and Jim, are well on their way to completely transforming the space:

After removing all the brick and painting everything black, they are now installing the wood planks that will make up the walls of our 1913 relief station.

We have big plans for the room that prepares our visitors before they travel back in time. Some of you might remember the little room that we had for our Prohibition exhibit being on the cozy side. Our team decided to extend that space into a larger exhibit room that will be able to adequately house all the important content we have planned.

Our design interns from Herron School of Art and Design, Cory and Ellie, spent a lot of time in the room during its construction. Being in the space with your sketchbook in hand really helps your designs translate from drawings into physical objects.

Roger and Jim extended the walls, drywalled and prepared the space for painting.

The space will be very dramatic.We are blowing up two images of the destruction from the 1913 flood from our collection and wallpapering the space.Our interns from the Art Institute of Indianapolis, Lani and Jojo, painted the walls last week. This creates a nice smooth surface for the large images.

Things are very busy in our studio. The team is working hard on all the little elements that will come together over the next three weeks.

Lani is making a custom font based on period appropriate hand writing just for this exhibit. We will use the final font throughout the relief station. We always reference original items from the time period when dressing the space. These custom reproductions make each You Are There space unique and realistic.

The larger items are worked on, in stages, by multiple people.The Senior Director of Information Technology, Luke, has been spending time in our studio testing out an interactive developed by our design intern, Ellie.

Ellie has been designing and developing this beautiful touchscreen interactive for the exhibit for many weeks. When using the touchscreen, the user will feel like they are looking at images through a window. Roger built this custom box for the touchscreen inside a vintage window. It is gorgeous in person. I can’t wait for the touchscreen to be installed inside and see it hung on the wall.

Sarah Anderson is the exhibit designer for IHS. Sarah is a TEDTalk loving, digital artist with a passion for design thinking.

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