Where Can You Find Things Like Giant Sequins And Fake Dirt? Check Out The Great Big Exhibit Resource List!

Developers, designers, and educators often need to track down unusual (or very specific) items to create museum exhibitions or trade show displays.

That's where The Great Big Exhibit Resource List comes in!

What started out years ago as a project for an ASTC Conference session, has now blossomed into an ever-growing and evolving set of resources organized by categories like "Fake Food", "Green Exhibits Materials", and "Glow-In-The-Dark Stuff".  (As a matter of fact, I just added some new entries this week.)

Blacksmith tools?  No problem!  Specialized plastic boxes? Sure!  Giant sequins for an air exhibit? Click the link!

Click on over to The Great Big Exhibit Resource List to explore the possibilities yourself.  (If you have suggestions for additions to the list, feel free to drop me an email.)

And while you finding the exhibit supplies of your dreams in The List, also check out the FREE Exhibit Resources page on the POW! Website.  There you'll find downloadable articles and resources such as donor recognition examples as well as a wide range of museum/exhibit/design topics like those covered here on the ExhibiTricks blog.



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Paul Orselli writes the posts on ExhibiTricks. Paul likes to combine interesting people, ideas, and materials to make exhibits (and entire museums!) with his company POW! (Paul Orselli Workshop, Inc.) Let's work on a project together!

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Exhibit Design Toolbox: More Tape!

Perhaps this posting should be called, "Son of The Sticky Subject of Tape" in honor of our prior posting concerning specialty tapes that exhibit designers should know about.

Claire Pillsbury from The Exploratorium was kind enough to offer some additional suggestions concerning cool, useful, and unusual types of tape, and here they are:

Vet Wrap
A "self-clinging" wrapping material that does not require tight compression.


Instant-bonding Glue Dots
Adhesive "dots" that require no drying time, are clean and easy to use, and work on a variety of materials. Glue Dots bond instantly to any surface.


Terrifically Tacky Tape
This is double-sided craft tape with red liner that is super strong. (The bond actually increases after the first 24 hours it is applied.)

This is the same kind of ultra-thin, very sticky tape as "3M 4910 VHB Tape" but TT tape comes in shorter-length rolls so it is less expensive.


EMPTY EMPTY and PACKED PACKED tape rolls from Benchmark.
Use on crates for traveling exhibitions so you don't mix 'em up!
(Benchmark sells lots of other interesting exhibit and mount-making supplies as well.)


3M Dual Lock Reclosable Fastener System
Clear self-mating reclosable fastener with clear acrylic adhesive on the back. This is the "mushroom" topped style, rather than hook and loop, so it fastens to itself and doesn't collect fuzz like the "hook" half of velcro.


Colored Plastic Vinyl Floor Marking Tape
Great for outlining areas on floors or walls. These tapes are highly adhesive and resistant to water, oil, fungus and chemicals, have a semi-gloss finish, and can be written on with permanent markers.


1/4"-wide Colored Plastic Vinyl Tape
Also from Identi-Tape, these 6-mil vinyl adhesive tapes are available in a 14 colors plus clear in 36-yard long rolls. These tapes are ideal for constructing lines and tables on dry erase boards, identification of small tools, decorative striping, etc.


A tip of our taped-up topper to Claire for her sticky suggestions!

Did we miss any of your favorite sticky supplies? Let us know in the "Comments Section" below!

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Exhibit Designer Toolbox: The Sticky Subject Of Tape

Tape is one of those things that you often use, but rarely think about.

For now, I thought I'd highlight some unusual tapes for you to add to your exhibits (and prototyping!) toolkit:

3M SOLAS Tape

"SOLAS" stands for "Safety Of Life At Sea" and it is super-durable reflective tape that was designed originally to be used by the Coast Guard. It's strong. It's shiny. What more could you want? It may also be useful outside your exhibit pursuits on bikes, backpacks, or cars.

Available here



Gaffer's Tape

If you think duct tape is useful, try Gaffer's tape. You can think of Gaffer's Tape as duct tape without the sticky residue. It's the standard tape in the film and theater worlds. Best of all, the adhesive is designed to not rip off paint. You can leave Gaffer's tape stuck to a wall for days, and then remove it without tearing up the wall surface or leaving sticky gunk behind.

Available here



Vypar X-Treme Tape

X-treme tape is a non-adhesive, self-bonding wrap. It's not really "tape" since it's not sticky. But it really grips and wraps around wet stuff or slimy stuff --- think water exhibits, hoses, bubble exhibits, etc. Once it's in place -- it is NOT coming off! You just pull on the tape and it fuses to itself under tension. As a bonus it comes in a range of colors as well.

Available here



And now, two variations on good old reliable duct tape:

Gorilla Tape

Gorilla Tape is like regular duct tape on steroids. Sure, it's much stickier, but it also adheres to uneven/rough surfaces.

Available here


Clear Duct Tape

From the creative minds of 3M comes "clear "duct tape! It is less noticeable than standard duct tape, but more importantly, 3M claims it lasts 6 times longer than the standard variety, having been engineered for extreme temperatures and UV exposure.

Available here


Any discussion of tapes, and especially duct tape, would be incomplete if we didn't mention the annual "Duck" brand duct tape "Stuck At Prom" Scholarship Contest. Duck makes duct tape (a little confusing, I know) and holds an annual contest for couples to create a complete set of prom outfits using duct tape! (You can see one example at the top of this blog posting.) Also check out the completely mind-boggling array of past contest entries at the Duck Tape website.


Have any favorite tapes that we've missed? Leave us the info in a comment below!

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Exhibits 101: Always Keep A Spare!

I'm on the road in beautiful Denver, attending the ACM (Association of Children's Museums) Conference.

I'll recap the conference and my impressions next week, but in the meantime one of my favorite Exhibit 101 credos: "Always keep a spare!"

NOT spare exhibits, but spare parts (or spare consumables) to ensure that your beautiful $10,000.00 exhibit is not shut down for a week because it needs a 50 cent replacement part.

As you can see in the picture above, it's also nice to include spare parts storage inside the exhibits cabinetry itself where possible. (As noted by Kim Wagner, in a recent post at her Ms. Exhibits blog.)

Have any great techniques for keeping exhibit spares handy? Let us know in the Comments Section below.

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Exhibit Maker's Toolbox: Glow In The Dark String

Sometimes interesting exhibit supplies and show up in unexpected places. While working on a recent exhibit design project, I went in search of different types of glow-in-the-dark materials and found Sublime Stitching in Austin, Texas.

If you scroll to the bottom of the handy Tools Section of their website you will find the finely braided glow-in-the-dark thread in a palette of five colors to fill all your fiber and phosphorescent needs!

Several of the other tools highlighted in this section of the Sublime Stitching website, while originally intended for sewing and stitching purposes, will work well for your next prototyping or exhibition project as well.

What non-traditional exhibit development resources do you use?

Share your finds in the Comments Section below!

Exhibit Maker's Toolbox: United Nuclear

As a follow-up to my "Dangerous Science" post, several folks asked about United Nuclear.

Once you get past their ominous sounding name, the folks at U.N. can provide just about anything a budding mad scientist could desire: GIANT neodymium magnets, check. Radioactive materials, check. The types of chemicals that create wonderful explosions, check!

Naturally, all of these materials are to be handled judiciously, but aside from the inherent "cool" factor, United Nuclear is worth supporting on general principles since the Office of Homeland Security (among others) have tried to shut them down for making "dangerous" materials available to people.

MAKE

As one of their charter subscribers, I've always admired the DIY ethic of Make Magazine and their burgeoning empire. Each issue of MAKE is filled with enough cool project ideas, hacks, and tips to keep even a dedicated gizmologist busy for several months! You have to love a magazine that details how to make a kite-based aerial photography rig from popsicle sticks and a disposable camera, s one simple example.

The MAKErs have also spawned a sister magazine called Craft, a great blog site, and best of all, an annual event called the Maker's Faire (sort of a Woodstock for makers and tinkerers.) The first Maker's Faire happened in the San Francisco Bay Area last year. This year besides the SF MF, MAKE added an additional event in Austin.

If you don't already know about MAKE, check them out! (A subscription or one of their project kits makes a great gift.)

Metal for the Masses!

A quick tip via Make Magazine:

If you need a small quantity of metal(s) for your prototypes or projects check out Speedy Metals

They are happy to handle small orders!

Science On A Shoestring

A great set of articles from Nature outlines many interesting examples and applications of "Science On A Shoestring" from around the world.

One of my favorite examples is the $4.00 bamboo microscope (pictured above) produced by the non-profit group in India called Jodo Gyan

Trackstick: A New Visitor Studies Tool For Museum Evaluators?

The website called Trackstick.com has listed an interesting GPS-enabled app called "Trackstick."

Basically, it's a clip-on battery-powered device about the size of a pack of gum that tracks and records movements (tech specs say it has a 2.5-meter accuracy.)

The really slick thing though, is that the Trackstick coordinates with Google Earth (and similar online mapping programs) to create a visual record of the path(s) that anyone wearing a particular Trackstick traveled!

This seems like a great tool for evaluators and exhibit developers to get a handle on where visitors travel in zoos, botanical gardens, and large outdoor historical sites as well as around museum sites.

Has anyone out there tried one of these? I'll present my own impressions in a future posting.

Cool Tools for Exhibits Folks

Everybody needs cool tools!

Here a few favorite websites in the "Making Things"folder of my browser bookmarks. Enjoy!

Let's start with Kevin Kelly's website, appropriately titled "Cool Tools" It's a compendium of continuously updated useful tools and techniques submitted by actual users. I always find something to stoke my gadget lust here.

Next up is Instructables a website devoted to sharing simple projects and hacks. Sort of a Web 2.0 for DIY geeks. Big fun!

Last is a one-trick pony called "This to That (Glue Advice)" It's just two simple pull-down windows that let you choose which material you want to glue to another material. CLICK and it gives you suggested adhesives (with links.)

Am I missing one of your favorite sites?

Let me know, and I'll include it in a future posting.

The Magical Yellow Book (NOT Harry Potter!)

If I could only have one catalog on my exhibit resources/supplies shelf it would hands-down be the big yellow book from McMaster-Carr.

The widgets and gizmos they sell have gotten me out of many an exhibit jam. I love the fact that you could buy a railroad car wheel here if you wanted/needed to (and get it delivered the next day!)

Check out their searchable website, but try to get a copy of the paper catalog to peruse as well.

Green Exhibits

One of the building trends in the museum business is GREEN.

Clients and visitors are, rightfully, concerned about the materials used to create both museum buildings and exhibitions. In many ways, children's museums have been leading the way in the green revolution.

Brenda Baker and her colleagues at the Madison Children's Museum have been concerned about the types of materials traditionally used in exhibits (lots of plastics and volatile chemicals) and have really worked hard to create more eco-friendly displays. One great product of their work is the website greenexhibits.org a wonderful compendium of information for everyone concerned about green materials.

The other program that children's museums lead the way in is LEED certification of their buildings.

What is LEED? The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System™ is the nationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction, and operation of high-performance green buildings. LEED gives building owners and operators the tools they need to have an immediate and measurable impact on their buildings’ performance. LEED promotes a whole-building approach to sustainability by recognizing performance in five key areas of human and environmental health: sustainable site development, water savings, energy efficiency, materials selection, and indoor environmental quality.

Several notable examples of new, or soon-to-be-completed, building projects from the children's museum world can be found in Pittsburgh, Brooklyn, and Helena, MT.

Unfortunately, green buildings and exhibit supplies are often more expensive than their "non green" substitutes, so it takes a real commitment on behalf of clients and designers to push green design. But, thanks to websites such as greenexhibits.org we all can have a better idea of what our eco-friendly design options are.

Swapping for Exhibits

Many museums, especially children's museums, like to include books in their exhibit areas. One difficulty with providing visitors with subject-related materials to enjoy during their visits is stretching the already tight exhibit supplies budgets to make this happen.

PaperBackSwap.com is one website that lets you "swap" existing books to gain points to exchange for books on the site. They have many types of books (not just paperbacks!)on a variety of topics including science, history, technology, etc. So clean out your old books to get some to use in your exhibit galleries! I like the idea and have happily used the PBSwap website. It's worth checking out.

In a similar way, I wonder if there is a way to "repurpose" surplus exhibit materials or devices between museums. We tried to start up such an exhibits exchange several years ago via ASTC, but it sort of petered out.

I wonder if now that we are in the brave new era of "Museum 2.0" there might be a way to "swap" exhibit materials that weren't being used at one museum to another interested institution.

If anyone would like to help start something like this up, let me know!

Magic Tape: Promising New Lighting Material for Exhibits?

Check out "Magic Tape" from Elshine s.r.l.

I am trying to latch onto a sample to noodle around with.
(I'll insert a critique once I've tried it.)

What sorts of exhibit applications could we use this stuff for?

London (Exhibits) Calling

A recent report of a mention of the Exhibit Cheapbooks by Ian Russell during the recent ECSITE Conference in Lisbon, Portugal got me thinking about the differences between museums and exhibit development, here in the US, and "across the pond" in the UK.

"Boffins" are greatly appreciated in the UK. Museum and exhibits people, like the chaps at Science Projects in London, really love to tinker and prototype, and it shows in their exhibitions. Here in the US, many museum folks talk about prototyping, but I'm not sure how much of it actually occurs.

Exhibit meetings, just for the sake of having a meeting, seem to be disdained in the UK. Unlike the US Exhibit Development process, which seems to thrive on meetings. In the UK, BIG, The British Interactive Group, runs regular Fabricators' Weeks where exhibit folks crash around with each other in workshops filled with materials to create as many working prototypes as they can before a big public showing on Friday. Sort of like a Science Fair for adults. (Except with pubs and pints thrown in.)

Many museums in the UK tend to approach things in a simpler, more playful way than US Museums. (except the Science Museum, with its bridges made of glass, looking like the NYC Apple Store. Although even there, the older exhibits like Tim Hunkin's exhibition called "The Secret Life of the Home" are excellent. I guess they have more twee designers in charge, and less boffins, there now.)

Perhaps museum visitors are more "polite" in the UK than their US counterparts. There seems to be a less obvious presence of guards and protective barriers in all types of museums in the UK, even surrounding "valuable" objects. It makes me wonder if environmental cues in museums don't help reinforce expectations of visitor behavior. (It is always comical to see how visitors delight in "foiling" the protective barriers around exhibits by shoving bits of trash, oft-times printed material provided by the museum, inside. It's almost as if each piece shoved inside is saying "HA! you tried to keep me out, but I got in anyway!" Unfortunately, the protective barriers are often such a pain to remove that the poor museum staff must leave the junk inside for long periods at a time, detracting from the exhibit objects.)

The UK Interactive Museum Community has had the advantage of learning from the triumphs (and failures!) of the older US Interactive Museum Community. Rather than trying to recreate models formed in the US, museum folks in the UK have put their own distinctive twist on things, gathering things to use from colleagues around the world, and creating their own distinctively UK museum and exhibit models. One example in the Science Center field is Techniquest , located in Cardiff. For a US visitor familiar with Science Centers, poking around TQ is a strange and wonderful experience, both like and unlike a US Science Center at the same time.

So I say "Cheers!" to our museum colleagues in the UK. You all have a reason to be "chuffed" about your work.

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?