No Bells, No Whistles: When Design and Content Marry Perfectly

Perhaps it's it's not surprising that a design museum would have good design.  It was lovely to visit the Cooper-Hewitt Museum a few weeks ago and discover an interactive exhibit that relied only on great design along with pencils and paper (plus stickers) to create a compelling visitor experience.  Yes, I got to try out their pen--but honestly, I enjoyed this more.

The goal of the exhibit was to engage visitors in thinking about how our creative efforts in design can help solve problems.  Incredibly clear, the exhibit began with a start here and then an overview of the process of visiting the exhibit.

 

 

Then it led you step-by-step through the design process, beginning with finding a value (interesting, right?  museums don't often talk about values as drivers of behavior).

Then you moved to a question. They were broad enough to encourage creative thinking, yet I began to see the constraints that encourage creativity being put into place.

You're asked to reflect on both question and value.

So far, it's been the incubation step in the creative process. We learn what the process  is, and we begin to gather information.  But the process still needs more information.  Because visitors might not be designers, we're given a hand, with a group of design tactics.  Will you use a stage, social media, a public bath or a police station to, say, increase access to healthy food?

 We're reminded that creative combining is a great way to find solutions.  That's why we're asked to pick two cards.  We've designed our solutions--but that's not the end.  We see real-live designers sharing their projects and we see other visitors sharing their solutions. A physician reminds us that "less is more" is often true in medicine as it is in architecture.

Finally, you get to place your project where you think, physically, where it belongs.  Does it work in a parking lot?  on a roof?  in a warehouse?  Helping to remind us that the city itself is a living laboratory for all kinds of creative experiments (as a rural dweller myself, it's the same thing with different vocabulary).

And although it seemed a bit of an afterthought, I loved this cartoon about successful and unsuccessful community design processes, a reminder that community engagement makes all things better.

Thanks Cooper Hewitt for providing us all with the reminder that pens and pencils combined with ideas are a place where creativity lives.  When it comes time to develop your next exhibit, consider all the alternatives.

PS  I did use the pen, but did not look up my saved works when I arrived home.

What's Your Institutional Voice?

August has been a slow month,  deep in book edits,  travel prep and other projects.  But I'm in Los Angeles for a couple days and visited the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles yesterday.  I was struck by the strong, but varied, institutional voice in play in their new exhibitions and other areas.  The old institutional voice is what you might have expected.  Here's a look at the introductory panel to an exhibit about California history (from the '80s from the look of it--and partially closed and perhaps headed towards extinction). Omniscient,  one might say even a little boring.  You get a sense that this institution might be really good and numbering and filing things.

But here are some images--with some new kinds of voices from their new exhibitions.  At the top of the post,  a sign post in the outdoor interpretive space.  Inviting, informal,  inspiring curiousity (and sometimes, just below) a sense of humor.

The new institutional voice makes clear that there are curious, passionate people who work at the museum.  The Nature Lab features cartoon sort of mind-maps of a number of scientists,  telling their own stories of growing up and loving nature in LA.

I mean who doesn't love a guy who loves to look at birds, every day, dead or alive?  But it's not just the natural science people.  In the new dinosaur exhibit,  the palentologists share their work--but not just in dry scientific terms.

And those voices help us with questions.  Some are questions we might already have,  but some might be ones we'd never thought of.  Food on teeth?  who knew?

 

But vitally, the museum's institutional voice isn't just all all about them.  In so many places it makes it clear that we all can participate in the work of observing nature, of analyzing, of finding out new things.   Here's a big label about a budding scientist:

Here's what you can do to help learn more about LA's wildlife, organized by what you want to do.

And,  in the Mammal exhibit,  an ask for you to think big.  You, that's you.

When was the last time you thought about what your institutional voice was?  Not just what you said,  but what the tone and approach are.  There are still so many museums holding on to a single voice, at a time when we've all become used to a wide variety of choices for our information.  By creating a sensibility,  but opening it up to--and encouraging--all kinds of different voices in ways that go beyond Post-It response boards,  this museum inspired me.  Where have you heard a great museum voice(s)?

Where's Your 21st Century Community?

If you're a local or regional history museum,  what are you documenting about your local community today?  You might be collecting flyers,  or hand-made quilts, or signs from downtown stores.  But this summer, my husband, Drew Harty, has embarked on a project that's made me both think deeply about our communities today and wonder about their future.  And what, we as museums, might be doing about this.

Drew's spending three months looking at and photographing those places that we see almost every day, but we really almost never look at--those retail landscapes at the edge of your town--at the edge of really almost every town and city, large and small.   He's undertaken this project because he wonders,

What have we lost as towns across the country look increasingly the same? Are Retail Landscapes changing our standards for what is unique and beautiful in our communities? Are these places that are so familiar to all of us changing our expectations of what a community should be?

What could a history museum do to further this conversation?  I think we need to go deeper than just exhibits highlighting once thriving Main Streets.   Perhaps we could engage in conversations about beauty,  or projects that encourage a thoughtful exploration of placemaking.   Could an exhibit highlight the places all of the goods in our community come from?  How can we encourage young people to think beyond the shiny newness of strip malls and big boxes?  How can we force ourselves to go beyond a simple, class-related dismissal of these places ("oh, I never shop at Wal-Mart") to creating our museums as an alternative, as a place where everyone in our community feels as welcome as they do at Wal-Mart?

Drew's speculated at what viewers one hundred years from now will think about these images.  Will they be as quaint and outdated as those horse and buggy main streets?  Or will they be so, so, so familiar that shots of fields, farm and neighborhoods are the true exotics?

So, museum folks, what say you?  And, by the way, you have until midnight, this Wednesday, June 19,  to help Drew's project along the way by supporting him at the crowd funding site USA Projects and you can see regular updates on his Tumblr feed.

Words + Image: Pondering Signage

While in Newfoundland for a couple weeks I found myself looking at many different types of mostly outdoor, but some indoor, exhibitry and signage.  That, combined with some current thinking with Rainey Tisdale about creativity on a shoestring, made me realize that sometimes, money hinders a presentation that connects with audiences and sometimes simple changes and solutions really make a connection.

Here's some of what I found along my tour of this incredible place.  (and the the way, I'm now a huge Newfoundland booster--go visit, it's terrific!) Above, one of my favorite labels on the beach boardwalk at Trout River.  It's done by school kids from a photo and really provides just enough information.  That's enough for me to understand about capellin while I'm on the beach.

This is from Cape Spear, the easternmost point of North America.  Again, it tells you what you want to know as you look out over the sea--and nothing more.  Also from Cape Spear, these interpretive panels are very simple, but the cut-out shapes and the large graphic make all the difference.

 

Below, something I didn't love at the Discovery Centre in Gros Morne (where I did see other things I liked).  Clearly a very expensive exhibit,  but I found myself utterly confused by what I should focus on first, what the interactives meant,  and so much text on vacation made me give up pretty quickly.

There seemed to be more variation in national park signage than I see here in the United States and I really appreciated it.  Below,  a panel from Gros Morne,  that shared information about an aboriginal guide and invited you to reflect as you walked along the trail.  It fit beautifully into the landscape, as you can see. Next,  an unusual round panel from a wet hike in Terra Nova, another national park that was very simple,with just a brief amount of information.

Two panels from Signal Hill in St. John's.  The first, a panel on fog that made me laugh because there was so much fog you could barely see the panel!  And the second, an old school identifier--a shiny brass plaque from the 19th century, still cared for with pride.

The temptation for too much text is always with us.  Here's two panels from the same small museum.  One I suspect is hardly read by any visitor;  but the second shot shows how clear thinking and decent photos convey important information.

I was interested in these outdoor panels that used graphic, almost cartoony imagery at Gros Morne National Park.  They felt like lovely children's books and I found myself much more attracted to them than the scientific illustrations or hard-edged photos often found in installations like these.

I saw a couple pieces of audio signage that made me want to learn more.  First, one from St. John's that I didn't get around to calling, but as I understand it,  takes you to an audio of personal stories about that particular place.  The second, a series of small, hand-carved very simple dioramas with audio at the Discovery Centre in Gros Morne.  The audio was music, or first person dialogue--interesting, and intriguing to do with the carvings.

And finally, two home-made signs.

 

Have any great examples of signage to share?