Category Archives: Design

Attractive Outdoor Interpretive Panels are Possible at a Bargain Price

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James Madison’s Montpelier in Virginia sports some very attractive interpretive signs that looked so good, I had to figure out how they were made. With a bit of prodding and poking, I discovered they were printed plastic attached with Velcro to a sturdy wooden frame.  Very clever!  The signs are great looking even after a couple years outside.

Peggy Vaughan, Vice President of Communications and Visitor Services, generously shared that the three signs cost about $900 total:  $90 for each 30″x 40″ PVC sign and $210 for each base. The content, design, and bases were created in-house (yes, Montpelier is fortunate to have a graphic designer and master carpenters on staff) and the signs were printed by FedEx Office (formerly Kinkos). This sign was created using Adobe Indesign, saved as a pdf, and printed directly on PVC–the image isn’t as sharp but they last longer outdoors than the alternative method of laminating a printed image onto PVC. Peggy said that, “The big advantage to these signs for us was that they are relatively cheap, and because everything around here is always changing, we did not want to spend $2,000 on a proper museum sign, as we had in the past, that would be out of date before it wore out. And, frankly, even if things don’t change at your museum, your messaging should change from time-to-time to keep up, don’t you think?”

If you’re looking for more ideas for signs at historic sites, I’ve collected dozens of images from places around the world—good, bad, and ugly—on several web albums.  Please note that one sign may serve several purposes (e.g., directional AND identification), so look in other categories, too.

Identification Signs

Directional and Wayfinding Signs

Informational Signs

HBR: What Virals Ads can Tell Us About Engaging Visitors

Evian's Roller Babies commercial demonstrates what makes an ad go viral.

The March 2012 issue of the Harvard Business Review focuses on U. S. business competitiveness in the world and won’t interest most readers of EngagingPlaces.net, however, there are a few smaller stories scattered around that are relevant.  Thales Texiera’s article on “The New Science of Viral Ads” lays out five techniques that encourage people to watch and share their commercials (in other words, “go viral”) and I’ve modified three of them to address the needs of visitors at historic sites:

  • Play down the logo, play up the brand.  If your logo is too dominant or intrusive, visitors will be turned off by this obvious attempt to manipulate them.  A few places are fine and expected (e.g. letterhead, entrance sign, mugs in the store) but I’ve visited sites where a logo is on every sign, including the one pointing to the bathroom.  It may make your board happy, but it’ll turn off your visitors.  Instead, unobtrusively weave your brand (not logo) throughout the visitor experience.  Texiera uses Coca-Cola’s “Happiness Factory” ad as an example (how was the Coca-Cola logo used?).
  • Create joy and surprise right away.  Visitors stay engaged in large part if they encounter joy or surprise.  So in tours, for example, add an element of joy or surprise into the introduction rather than saving it only for the conclusion.  Each site will need to figure this out for themselves, but it can be a surprising fact or an earnest welcome. Bud Light’s “Swear Jar” ad is an example of delivering humor and surprise to maintain viewers’ interest (and just a warning, this ad may offend some people and because it promotes the drinking of alcohol, you’ll need to register as an adult on YouTube to view it).
  • Build an emotional roller coaster.  Just as in a good novel, the rhythm or flow helps carry the visitor along and keeps them engaged with fresh twists and turns.  Tours too often are presented as just one fact/object/room after another.  Instead of building a tour solely on cognitive elements (e.g. facts, names, and dates), integrate some affective ones (e.g., humor, surprise, suspense, drama, fun)–just make sure it’s appropriate, authentic, and based on fact.  Evian’s “Roller Babies” cuts between scenes for an emotional roller coaster of continual surprises.  With more than 50 million views on YouTube, it’s a major hit.

For more, read Thales Texiera’s article on “The New Science of Viral Ads” online or watch the five-minute interview that accompanies the story.

For Lovers of New England: A Week on the Road in June

Discover the rich history of the region with Historic New England’s Program in New England Studies, an intensive week-long exploration of New England from Monday, June 18 to Saturday, June 23, 2012.  The Program in New England Studies includes lectures by noted curators and architectural historians, hands-on workshops, behind-the-scenes tours, and special access to historic house museums and museum collections. The program examines New England history and material culture from the seventeenth century through the Colonial Revival. Curators lecture on furniture, textiles, ceramics, art, and wallpaper and cover their history, craftsmanship, and changing methods of production. Architectural historians explore a timeline of regional architecture starting with the Massachusetts Bay styles of the seventeenth century through the Federal and Georgian eras, to Gothic Revival and the Colonial Revival. Participants visit historic sites and museums with curators and enjoy special receptions.

Expert lecturers include:

  • Richard Candee, professor emeritus, Boston University
  • Cary Carson, retired vice president of the research division at Colonial Williamsburg
  • Abbott Lowell Cummings, former director, Historic New England Continue reading →

Pine Point: Interpreting a Vanished Town

Pine Point, an interactive Web documentary by The Goggles.

Last week I had a chance to visit Bill Adair, director of the Heritage Philadelphia Program and one of the co-authors of the new book, Letting Go?:  Sharing Historical Authority in a User-Generated World.  As usual, we had a wide ranging discussion which included his interest in the work of The Goggles, an award-winning Canadian design group headed by Paul Shoebridge and Michael Simons.  He was particularly taken by “Pine Point,” an interactive web documentary about a northern mining town that closed in 1988 and was demolished.  Through oral histories, documents, video, and artifacts, the story of this ghost town is told in a mesmerizing scrapbook style.  If you’re looking for a way to interpret a place in a new way on the Web, this might provide some inspiration.

Urban Land Institute Recognizes Recently Restored Historic Places

Ron Nyren of the Urban Land Institute recently recognized ten projects completed in the past five years that brought back “valuable community resources from decline and neglect.”  Nyren notes the importance of these places because they, “serve as a link to the past, a site for shared memory, and an anchor in the often-changing urban landscape.”  We’d call them historic sites, but no matter, we’re happy to see more examples of great places reborn, especially when they seem like white elephants, such as:

Don’t let anyone tell you a saving an historic site is impossible and it can’t be reused.  When you’ve seen these projects, you’ll know it just requires creative thinking and a good plan (and yes, money–but rarely is anything free).

Christine Madrid French leaves National Trust

Christine Madrid French

The Modernism + Recent Past program at the National Trust for Historic Preservation (aka TrustModern) has been absorbed into its Preservation10X effort, a new strategic plan for its programs and sites, eliminating the director’s position held by Christine Madrid French.
Under Chris’ leadership, the Modernism + Recent Past Program raised public awareness and supported grassroots advocacy across the country through the Modern Modules events and printed booklets, the Modernism in Hawaii context study, collaborative efforts with the Farnsworth House and the Glass House, and the Angel Grant Program.  TrustModern was established in 2009 and supported in part by the Henry Luce Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and the LaFetra Foundation.
Christine will be moving on to new opportunities including teaching architectural history at the University of Central Florida, continuing her efforts in preservation advocacy, and working with Balcony Press to publish her book on mid-20th century Mission 66 visitor centers in our national parks.  She received her Master’s degree in architectural history from the University of Virginia and is a frequent writer and speaker on modern architecture but is best known for Continue reading →

New Guide for Historic Sites on the Scottsboro Boys Trials

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Before I left the National Trust last October, I was the director of the Interpreting African American Historic Places Project, an experimental initiative funded by the Ford Foundation.  One of the elements was a grant program for collaborative projects between universities and historic sites to improve interpretation of African American history and culture through historic places and for a few years, the National Trust supported some amazing projects that are now just beginning to bear fruit.

One of the most interesting projects was the interpretation of the infamous Scottsboro Boys Trials of the 1930s by the New College at the University of Alabama and the Scottsboro Boys Museum and Cultural Center.  Ellen Griffith Spears and Shelia Washington initially sought to mark a few sites related to the trial in Scottsboro, but after some discussions with them, broadened their scope to look at all the places that were associated with this major civil rights event, providing a geographic context that’s often overlooked.  They’ve just shared with me Continue reading →

Engaging Exhibits: An Experimental Approach at the Smithsonian Institution

Andrew Pekarik discussing a new theory of visitor typologies to the education staff at the National Air and Space Museum.

Yesterday I had lunch with Tim Grove, the Chief of Interpretation at the National Air and Space Museum and author of the History Bytes column in History News, to catch up on various things.  We were discussing my current puzzling out of methodologies for my book on interpretive planning for historic sites and discussing Howard Gardner’s “multiple intelligences,” when he mentioned that I might be interested in joining his staff meeting that afternoon.  Andrew Pekarik in the Office of Policy and Analysis at the Smithsonian was giving a presentation on a new theory for visitor engagement–would I like to come?   Absolutely!

Andy’s presentation was a short 30 minutes but was incredibly intriguing.  It’s based on dozens of evaluations on various exhibits at several different Smithsonian exhibits and is currently being independently verified, but the framework is public and was published with Barbara Mogel in the October 2010 issue of Curator as “Ideas, Objects, or People?  A Smithsonian Exhibition Team Views Visitors Anew.”  Here’s the new framework in a nutshell: Continue reading →