Teamwork: The Orchestration of Exhibit Design
by Jennifer Bressler
Successful contemporary exhibition design requires the integrated skills of a wide range of disciplines. Everything from architecture down to caption writing and color selection is involved in the production of even the most modest of exhibits. While a talented exhibition architect, a graphic designer and an expert writer may be self-contained (employed full-time under the same roof), sometimes a more focused, multi-discipline approach — made up of independent experts — presents a stronger, more harmonious alternative. By collaborating with a range of independent experts, all-star teams can be created, resulting in a dynamic, unified pool of talent — provided these teams are based on mutual respect, friendship, fun and a true thirst for the exhibition’s content.
Like a Symphony Orchestra…
The emerging practice of collaborative exhibition design requires a passion for the development and creation of memorable experiences that immerse, educate, entertain and capture visitors from all over the world. Much like the instrumental ensemble of an orchestra is made up of string, brass, woodwind and percussion sections, an exhibition design team is made up of a group of independent artists and experts that come together to perform, or in this case, design a particular exhibition. The team members, each an experienced specialist in her or his own right, are collectively contributing a specialty. This ‘high-performance specialist’ model results in an ensemble team, totally focused on one objective – creating the best exhibit possible. After the performance, the group disbands and the individuals move on to other projects, sometimes individually, sometimes together.
This ‘expert team’ model works not only in a concert hall, but for exhibit design and production as well. The complexity and focused content of today’s exhibits is well suited to project design teams. Because exhibits usually present information and stories about specific topics, the right combination of experienced talent often requires specific knowledge of the exhibit’s subject. When Fricker & Radetsky wanted to launch a show based on the history of space exploration for the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum, they facilitated the creation of a design team with this type of experience. Based in northern California, Tom Fricker, a brilliant exhibition designer and plein air painter, and Peter Radetsky an equally accomplished writer and content developer, joined with project director, InSung Kim, and designers, Katie Varrati and Eileen Hiraike with Hunt Design, experts in exhibit design and graphics.
With an existing working relationship spanning several years, this dynamic team had produced numerous permanent and traveling exhibits for institutions such as The Smithsonian, Kennedy Space Center, Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center, the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, and many others.
While self-contained exhibit design firms are often generalists and unable to staff a project with designers of the exact expertise needed for any one project, the more collaborative nature of the independent team approach brings together a highly skilled group of people with the exact expertise required to execute the project. For example, the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, partnered with CBS, and won $2.4 million from National Science Foundation to create a forensic science exhibit for national tour. To create the CSI: The Experience, an interactive exhibition based on the CBS hit TV show, The Fort Worth Museum of Science and History contracted with Bob Weis Design Island (BWDI). Bob Weis, now an executive vice president at Walt Disney Imagineering, along with Tim Steineour, now president of BWDI, pulled together a dynamic design team that included CBS, Seruto & Company, producer Cynthia Scrima, exhibit designer Scott Chase, media and content developer, Mellissa Berry, graphic designer, Hunt Design, film writer Chick Russell, Prop and Set Dresser, Richard Swim and many others. Together, they scripted and designed a sequential exhibit experience that takes the visitor through multiple crime scenes, labs for analysis and autopsy rooms. This forensic experience ends with visitors actually submitting a crime report to Grissom himself. The entertainment industry experience of all of the design team members coupled with the slew of nationwide crime lab and forensic experts made the exhibit not only possible—it made it credible.
While each member of this team has the tools to orchestrate an exhibition on its own, the mutual respect for one another’s specialty has turned the tides away from the single firm approach and created a multi-firm business model that focuses on each member sharing their particular talent and resulting in a stronger whole and more powerful final design concept.
Complementary Skills
“When a team outgrows individual performance and learns team confidence, excellence becomes a reality.”– Joe Paterno
The key to success in the team technique is combining designers and firms with complementary skills; redundant abilities are inefficient in small team situations. If an exhibit calls for an experienced children’s environment designer, one is added to the team. However, the best results come from design teams whose members are knowledgeable about the abilities and roles of the other players. The graphics designer need not be a skilled writer, but the work will be better if he/she is aware of the writer’s needs and intent. For Women & Spirit: Catholic Sisters in America, currently in the planning stages, BWDI and Seruto & Co. are conductors standing at the design podium. Nancy Seruto and Anna Schlobohm are orchestrating an unbelievable symphony made up of exhibition designer, John Low, talented writer, Heather Lindquist, exhibit graphic designer, Jennifer Bressler with Hunt Design, marketing specialist, Molly Miles, media/content developer, Mellissa Berry, and content researcher Kathy Talley-Jones.
What design brings to the table that symphonies do not, is the added opportunity to laugh, scream and share in creative brainstorming meetings. Whether it’s in the form of words, lists, sketches or renderings, every idea is thrown out in the open, and brought to life in the room… much like a reality TV show!
Frequently, team members will have productive ideas from outside of their particular area of expertise. They may start their sentence with, “I’m not a graphic designer, but could a little more contrast open up the space?” After laughing at the start of that sentence, the graphic designer is able to take the constructive criticism that may have come from a writer, or perhaps a prop designer, with little to no experience in graphics. Likewise, a graphic designer might comment on architecture or media, which is foreign to their skill set. It’s imagination at its best. It’s collaboration making a better product. It’s the collective group that makes for brilliance. Out of the seemingly discordant cacophony of talent, experience, good humor, and the deep respect for one another, emerges a symphony. Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision, and to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives.
Mixed Disciplines
The baseline skills needed for a museum or educational exhibit are planning, exhibit design, graphic design and writing. And usually such ancillary talents as lighting design, content development, image research, architecture and props and marketing are also needed.
On the Top of the Rock Experience at Rockefeller Center, Bob Weis and Randy Webster (BWDI) pulled together a brilliant symphony of media developers, writers, proofreaders, interior designers, graphic designers, researchers and historians to complement the project’s high-end retail design architect, Gabellini / Sheppard Associates. Even with all those disciplines, Heather Watson, project manager and lead designer with Hunt Design, directed an additional team of people to solve the complex graphics application on curved, convex walls with sloping floors! This particular “symphony of designers” and fabricators would have made a concert at Carnegie Hall look easy.
The Business Model
Clearly the museum or ‘owner’ of the exhibit needs a single source of responsibility, a contractor. Again, the symphony orchestra provides a model: the conductor. This person or firm often takes on the contract and executes sub-contracts with the other team members. Such a producer is Seruto & Company a veteran firm with a substantial portfolio of successful exhibits, shows and attractions. Nancy Seruto and her experienced staff have a roster of dozens of skill-specific designers, artists, writers and other experts. Seruto regularly assembles creative teams in response to requests from museums and entertainment companies. She negotiates a master contract with the end client and then organizes subcontracts with the specialist team firms. Sometimes the team members may contract directly with the museum, but will agree to be managed by Seruto.
For consulting graphics design firm Hunt Design, this group approach has been especially rewarding. The fourteen-person design company has been part of over twenty such shared projects, playing the graphics and information design role. While Hunt Design creates for places and spaces of all kinds, one sector of their work is dedicated to exhibition design. On the Welcome Wall at Mattel Children’s Hospital at UCLA, Hunt Design might be the exhibit designer or planner,but an equally important role was played by Benjamin Lein and Kevin Mitchell with Electrosonic in their media application. In other exhibits they might play a solely graphic role, like in Real Pirates: The Untold Story of the Whydah from Slave Ship to Pirate Ship. This Arts & Exhibitions International exhibit was designed by Tom Fricker and brilliantly written by NY writer, Sharon Simpson. No matter how big or small the project, the conductor in this business model is one member of the ensemble who is out to make music, not to advance in his or her own personal career. While there is clearly a chief conductor on any given exhibit, as mentioned above, any of the talented team members, the project manager, designer or writer, have been known to take the baton when their discipline is at hand. This mutual understanding of leadership is teamwork at it’s best.
Signature Style vs. Tailored Design
“I’m not interested in having an orchestra sound like itself. I want it to sound like the computer.”—Leonard Bernstein
Self-contained design firms often have a signature style, resulting in a design that is as much about the creator as the content. Developing exhibits with independent, project-specific teams results in an aesthetic that is naturally more focused on the client and the exhibition — because the team is always different, the results are too.
Chicano Now: American Expressions, a 5,000-square-foot interactive exhibit, was produced in collaboration with the actor/entertainer and prolific art collector Cheech Marin, Evergreen Exhibitions (formerly BBH Inc), Target and Hewlett Packard. With Cheech’s guidance and support, the exhibit weaved tradition, history and, of course, humor into a multi-media expression of the lives and rich contributions of Chicanos. Larry Wyatt of Wyatt Design was the conductor of this symphony, or exhibition. While each member on the team was a well-known designer in their own right, they designed to the “Chicano” topic at hand. It was not about the exhibit architecture of Eric Williams, the media of Benjamin Lein, the words of Peter Radetsky, or the graphic design of Heather Watson or Jennifer Bressler with Hunt Design, it was about striking the right balance of content, media, words, photographs and artwork that expressed the vibrant Chicano culture. Each and every Chicano artist that appeared in the traveling art gallery with this exhibit, collectively gave their all to make for a true symphony. Culture Clash, Cheech Marin, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, George López, Lourdes Portillo, Paul Rodrìguez, Robert Rodrìguez, Gustavo Vazquez, Richard Duardo, Chaz Bojorquez… each name bigger than the next. Again, artists are famous in their own right, but here we see a collaboration that makes for a better whole. Collaborative exhibition design is about tailoring to the exhibit content not about a designer’s signature style.
The Journey is a Process
“Here are two golden rules for an orchestra: start together and finish together. The public doesn’t give a damn what goes on in between.” Sir Thomas Beecham.
Developing exhibits with project-specific teams is also inherently more efficient. By teaming up with the very best in a given field, each able to work fast in their chosen disciplines. A graphic designer for instance, can sit and obsess over typefaces on ones own time, but when gathered with the team, we can discuss bigger concepts that leads the designer to choose a family of typography, or a particular font that needs several weights to tell the story. We might focus our team conversation on “the streakers, the strollers and the studiers” in any particular meeting. This common phrase in the exhibit world is based on the idea that every guest absorbs content in their own way. Much like reading a newspaper, some people glance thru the headlines (the streakers), others read the headlines and subheads (the strollers), and still others read every single word, (the studiers). In essence, we all focus on our own individual tasks on our own time, but spend wonderfully creative meetings throwing out crazy ideas, deep thoughts, complex media ideas all in the name of educating and entertaining our guests.
The one-stop exhibition design firm can be efficient, but needs to focus a great deal of time on many of the details that collaborative teams can do behind their own doors. A lighting designer can name light bulbs that would bore Thomas Edison to tears! You could laugh yourself to death hearing about pixels and aspect ratios from a media designer! I won’t even get into a graphic designer’s strange love and obsession for typography! Collaborative design teams are efficient, and strike a healthy balance of all the necessary design tasks, project management and master scheduling to collaborative sessions strongly focused just on the design itself. While we can collaborate in our own firms, there is nothing like mixed company! Put an exhibit producer, an exhibit designer, a writer, a media producer and a graphic designer in one room, and you have one wildly creative symphony orchestra!
Collaborative exhibition design is a passionate group of specialists, who behind the scenes, meet to ignite a wonderful interaction of people, talent and creativity. In the end, the final exhibition is a seamless work of art. If every museum visitor knew how many dedicated people it took to educate and entertain them, there would be a surge in the field of exhibition design.