POP! goes the Exhibit Design

POP! goes the Exhibit Design

(This posting is a slightly modified "encore" presentation from the ExhibiTricks vaults.)

Museums, being the notoriously cheap places that they are, can often benefit from helping their exhibit makers discover interesting and inexpensive new materials to use for their own devices.

One interesting resource in this regard is the world of POP Design. (I'm just a kid from Detroit, so when I hear the word "pop" I always think of a cold carbonated beverage like Faygo Redpop.)

But in this case, POP stands for "Point of Purchase." Think about all those shiny (sometimes motorized or moving or lit) displays near the chips or cold tablets or ball point pens that you see in all the stores you go to. Now multiply that single display for Doritos by thousands (or millions!) of copies worldwide and you'll begin to get a small sense of the scale of the POP industry.

So, what does this have to do with developing museum exhibits? Just this: once any material has been manufactured in sufficient volume (to be used in POP Displays, for example) the unit price goes way down. Low enough for museums to become interested in using color-shifting plastic, inexpensive digital audio repeaters, or scented laminates(!) in new exhibit components.

As you might expect the POP Design industry has their own journals, one of which P.O.P Design you can check out online.

What other unusual trade organizations or groups could we in the "Exhibits Biz" learn from?


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Museum Exhibit Design: Be On The Lookout For Unusual Sources!

Sometimes exhibit resources and exhibit materials show up in unexpected places.

A recent posting on the Dinosaurs and Robot Blog by Todd Lapin highlights this.

While working on his house, Todd came across AW Direct, a mail order catalog that sells parts and equipment for tow trucks. One of the non-traditional uses he made of a tow truck step was as a soap dish for his shower! It just goes to show that interesting design possibilities can pop up in the most interesting places.

I love finding interesting exhibit possibilities in the aisles of stores, like the new "green" line of toys from Toys R Us, or in catalogs or websites, like Sublime Stitching (for glow-in-the-dark string) or United Nuclear (for "dangerous" science supplies.)

What are some of your favorite "non-traditional" museum exhibit design sources? Let us know in the "Comments Section" below.

Don't miss out on any ExhibiTricks posts! It's easy to subscribe right now via email (or your favorite news reader) with the tools on the right side of the blog.

POP! goes the Exhibit Design

Museums, being the notoriously cheap places that they are, can often benefit from helping their exhibit makers discover interesting and inexpensive new materials to use for their own devices.

One interesting resource in this regard is the world of POP Design. (I'm just a kid from Detroit, so when I hear the word "pop" I always think of a cold carbonated beverage like Faygo Redpop.)

But in this case, POP stands for "Point of Purchase." Think about all those shiny (sometimes motorized or moving or lit) displays near the chips or cold tablets or ball point pens that you see in all the stores you go to. Now multiply that single display for Doritos by thousands (or millions!) of copies worldwide and you'll begin to get a small sense of the scale of the POP industry.

So, what does this have to do with developing museum exhibits? Just this: once any material has been manufactured in sufficient volume (to be used in POP Displays, for example) the unit price goes way down. Low enough for museums to become interested in using color-shifting plastic, inexpensive digital audio repeaters, or scented laminates(!) in new exhibit components.

What other unusual trade organizations or groups could we in the "Exhibits Biz" learn from?