Design 101: What's Your Story?

What's Your Story?  If your answer involves some hand-waving and referring to some cool new technological gadget in your lobby, I'm afraid you've lost me (and probably a large portion of your audience.)

Gizmos are NOT a story, but merely one possible way to tell a story.  Simple right?  You would think so, but unfortunately the siren-song of shiny, techy goodness often has a way of getting people to forget about, or rationalize away, their core messages (The Story!) that they want to impart.

Recently,  I've been in Helena, Montana working with the fine folks at ExplorationWorks Museum and I also attended the excellent SMartCAMP conference in NYC.  As I look back at my activities in both of these disparate situations, it is interesting to think about how many times the notion of "telling your story" or "staying on message" recurred.

If the notion of "story" is central to thinking about the next steps in the evolution of a nascent museum in Montana, and the common thread in the discussions of the social media hipsters at SMartCAMP, then I ask again, "What's Your Story?"

And are you spending enough time honing and polishing it to engage your audience with it?

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Museum Exhibit Design Inspiration: Bernie Zubrowski

If ever there was an "unsung hero" of the interactive museum exhibit game it's Bernie Zubrowski.

If you counted up all of Bernie's books, exhibitions, educational curricula and programs, you would find a vast body of work that has had a tremendous impact on everyone (whether they realize it or not) who struggles to create interesting interactive exhibits.

But leaving all that aside, Bernie is also a wonderful artist --- a true master of the kinetic, elegant application of simple materials and phenomena.  Now Bernie has turned loose videos of his work on his new website.  It's well worth a look!


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Be Part Of: GLOBE at Night

GLOBE at Night is an annual March program designed to highlight the effects of global light-pollution.

As noted on the GaN website, people from all over the world record the brightness of the night sky by matching its appearance toward the constellation Orion with star maps of progressively fainter stars. They submit their measurements on-line and a few weeks later, organizers release a map of light-pollution levels worldwide. Over the last four GLOBE at Night campaigns, volunteers from over 100 nations have contributed 35,000 measurements. What a great use of the Web to engage a group of citizen-scientists in a project!

You can participate by clicking over to the GLOBE at Night website to download free materials and instructions. This year's program runs from March 3rd through the 16th.

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Museum Exhibit Design Toolbox: Gear Template Generator

Did you ever have the need/desire to cut some gear shapes out of basic materials like wood or phenolic using basic tools like a band saw?

If so, you owe it to yourself to check out the Web-based Gear Template Generator created by Matthias Wandel.  Using simple fill-in boxes to set the parameters, you can generate paper templates to cut many types of standard gear arrangements, as well as planetary gears, and rack and pinion setups.

If you are really into such things it is also worth checking out Wandel's "Woodworking for Engineers" website.

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Legal "Exhibits" for Courtrooms

When I think of the word "exhibit" my mind naturally thinks of displays in museums.  But recently POW! got to create a demonstration device for a courtroom case (or in attorney parlance, an "exhibit.")

As you can see from the YouTube video above, we created a tabletop version of our Giant Newton's Cradle device using standard billiard balls.

Attorney Leila Kilgore, from the law firm Kilgore & Smith in Virginia, contacted us to find out whether we could create a custom Newton's Cradle to help her with a case.  She needed a way to help support the expert testimony of a Physics professor in explaining collisions for a case involving a multi-car accident.  In this case, the numbered billiard balls fit in exactly with the professor's explanations, so we deliberately kept them visible.

It was fun and different to create a courtroom "exhibit" rather than a museum "exhibit."  So, if you are a museum person (or lawyer!) in need of interesting exhibits, feel free to contact me directly to discuss how we can work together on your next project! 


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Exhibit Design Inspiration: Caleb Charland

The elegant black-and-white photographs produced by artist Caleb Charland neatly span the arbitrary distinction between "art" and "science."

The images on Charland's website could easily serve as models for thinking about both exhibit components and exhibit graphics. Well worth checking out and thinking about.

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