Tufte has made quite a name for himself in the world of informational graphics and the presentation of data. At each break, a line of at least 20 waited eagerly to have one of the four included books signed in silver felt tip. I remained in my seat and pretended to do the assigned reading.  With registration, we were given a cute cardboard box of his books and an 11 by 17 handout in his signature Gil Sans font. The assigned reading was required before the official start time of 10am but I was just too hyped up to focus after that free Styrofoam Starbucks coffee.

I have been interested in Edward Tufte for about a year now. M. Price, my prof for exhibit design at UCLA extension, recommended Envisioning Information for an assignment. Seen here. With the student discount the conference was a pretty good deal, I got a lot out of it.

During the conference Tufte’s main point was that we can consume much more data than most people expect. Highly dense graphics that use multi-levels of information are much more engaging than the excessively designed bar charts and graphs included in Microsoft Office. In viewing a graph that is dense, each person will search for the content of interest, thus the designer releases the authoritarian need to lead people through the exploration process. This forced exploration is often referred to as the painfully tedious, “Slow Reveal.”  You know,  those slow power point presentations with paragraphs in bullet form. Instead, if a person searches through information to make personal associations, this data will most likely be more memorable. Each person must use their own cognitive style to scan the information.  Tufte says “ there is no such thing as information overload, there is only bad design. Reduce the clutter”

Simple rules to follow:

• Never put information in boxes

• Always annotate

• Use gray linking likes

• Reduce optical clutter by calming down thick lines (mind the figure ground activity by using light lines)

• Find a good font and stick with it : Gill Sans/ Trebuchet

• Develop a sense of what is relevant (become a good sorter because 95 % of published material is junk)

• No matter how beautiful your interface design is, there should be less of it

• Mind the Quality, Relevance and Integrity of the content

• Fundamental design principles and solutions should arise from cognitive tasks and content not from the trends of software

So now that you have a sense of the history, lets talk design. When you enter the GRI (at the west end of the museum), you will see a large poster covering the windows. Upon entering the building, a floor graphic extends towards the door continuing up the wall to meet the playful handwritten title. The title wall helps to set the mood for the exhibit while introducing the audience to the graphic identity before diving into the art.

Tango with Cows Title wall

The floor graphic wraps around the corner and into the gallery. Here is the introduction panel. Notice the offset paper. This was printed in house to save money because the floor graphics were about ten thousand dollars to produce.

A proper introduction.

This is where you will pick up a brochure. It is printed in black and white on a thin yellowish, off white paper. Three staples bind 4, 2 sided pages of text that introduces each artist with a small thumbnail of their work. Originally the brochure was going to have a time line and information from the text panels but due to budget this was cut down.  The aesthetic of the brochure is supposed to emulate the small books created during the Russian futurist movement. After the brochure was printed there were some concerns about the brochure looking cheap. The exposed stables and thin yellow paper was used to represent the scarcity of resources for these artists during the turn of the century. The curator thought it looked like a kinkos xerox copy. Using additional colors may have been an easy remedy for the “cheap” look however this would add significantly to the printing costs. When budget is concerned, clear priorities must be established. During the final stages of installation someone noticed that the exhibition were not included. Robert quickly typeset a stamp and had it created in a matter of days. Each of the 15,000 brochures were hand stamped by a volunteer in a green color keeping in line with the movement.

Brochure in hand, I walked into the small, dimly lit gallery, and took my first photo. As usual, the flash went of and my face burned with embarrassment. I muttered my apologies and the guard called me out and exclaimed that these are valuable pieces of work; sorry doesn’t cut it. Isak the guard, a Russian immigrant who has been in the states from 30 years was knowledgeable and eager to talk to me about the exhibit.  He pointed out on the back of the ‘Handheld Facsimile’ books that there is a price. Isak showed me one book, printed in 1912, that read 70 K (or Kopeeks sp?) which is roughly 70 cents. We got to talking about the facsimile books in the gallery and he was convinced it was the real thing. I was skeptical but he pointed out the thickness of the paper and the saturation of the black ink. I couldn’t believe that the GRI would set out the real books for everyone to thumb through and drool over. The books had such a likeness to the real ones behind glass cases that Isak and I were fooled until I read the label. I later asked Robert about the books imagining that he spent hours making the facsimiles but in actuality the GRI imaging services was responsible. THis department is in charge of photographing the work for designers.

The real book behind plexiglass.

The handheld facsimile.

Thick yellow pages look worn and aged.

My only frustration with this exhibit was the interactive screens that were not functioning. Perhaps the software was too complex or the images were too big because the screens would freeze. In addition, I felt like the design of the software was a bit busy and not so user friendly or intuitive. Many of the visitors would overlook the screens and the audio devices. Robert mentioned that one of the most difficult aspects of this exhibit was creating the mount for these screens. The mounts have to be the perfect height for most visitors and they must be simple enough not to grab too much attention. The work should be the star of the show. For this reason, Robert chose to keep the graphics on the floor rather than on the walls. Exhibits can get busy pretty quickly and then you will lose the audience without a clear hierarchy of information.

This was a successful exhibit that communicated effectively. Some questions to keep in mind might be:

How can a clear hierarchy of information be created for people to enter into the show at various depths?

How can the structure of the mounts be invisible and understated?

Where can a designer scrimp on budget without the majority of the audience noticing?

How can interactive pieces be more engaging, intuitive and user friendly?

How can compromises be made to please both the designer and the curator?

The designers and curators use this board to get inspiration for the space.

At this stage, the designers start to organize the moods for each gallery in the exhibit.

Foam core models, created at 1:12,  are finished while colors and themes are chosen. Here the curators are finalizing where each piece will be displayed in the gallery. Different color sticky notes tag locations and other specifics. While adhering the color to the walls I had to remove my shoes to tip toe around the models already affixed to the floor.

When I returned today I noticed that all the colors, (from the previous week of painstaking color matching), had been printed out and placed in the model. It transformed the space!

Here is an aerial view of the gallery.

When I was in Merritt’s exhibit design class at UCLA extension, I forgot to place a scale figure into my model for the final project. I truly thought I had covered all my bases when turning in that final, however I forgot the most important aspect of creating a model. That is imagining people interacting with the space. How do the galleries flow from one room to another?  Will people easily access the text and interactive materials in the show? These are questions that should be easily be answered when a scale figure is introduced. It also gives the designers a sense of scale. Here is the title wall with two model people. Perhaps the text is too high for most people? These questions should be tackled before installation.

Title Wall for French Bronze

Here the designers needed to show how a printed scrim will look against a bronze sculpture. It was necessary to create a full size model and place a sample printed scrim in the background. The translucent material behind the piece frames it nicely. Using scrims are also a great way to divide spaces. It is understated and elegant.

Yellow fabric scrim

Sasha, the intern at exhibit design, invited me on a tour of special collections at the GRI. Claes Oldenburg‘s False Food Selection was one of many objects we were able to see up close and personal. This piece was aquired from Jean Baker Brown, who developed a large collection of Fluxus art at her home in Massachusetts. Read more about her here.
A note: I don’t think the box was such a brilliant blue color as portrayed in this photo. The catalogers must have been playing with the photoshop color picker.

I was given the paint chips for the wall colors that needed to be matched and printed on the plotter to create a physical mock up of the model.

There is no yellowish blue gray color! Convert to CMYK and make  your own.

When first deciding the colors for a show, these huge 4 by 4 foot paint chips are selected. The designers have these large swatches in order better visual the gallery space with the specific color. It is amazing how these colors can transform a space.

You may also notice that Saeyeon traced the Getty logo for the banner. It is in the upper left corner.

Putting together an exhibit like this is a lot of work. Designers strive for a structure and graphic identity that enhances the work. Most good design is invisible, it works as a cohesive force in conveying the concept of the show. A Drawings show like this, can take upwards of a 6 months to a year of advanced planning. In conveying the humor and playful nature of this show it was necessary to let the work shine.

The initial phase of design includes meeting with the curator, who in this case was The Getty’s Associate Curator of Drawings, Julian Brooks. After receiving the show materials and writings on the subject, Saeyeon poured over the caricatures and witty drawings conveying the human condition of Europe during the late middle ages. During this stage the designer starts to imagine how the space will tell a story. Perhaps getting a feeling for the mood of the room by envision a color palate and graphic styles.

Along these stages, several drawings are produced similar to this one created in vector works.

Notice how each drawing and each label has a specific measurement. There are standards that the exhibit design department established in order to have a consistent look in all the shows. For instance, all paintings are hung 60 inches from the floor. This is the perfect height for most visitors.

The exciting part of putting together a show is the installation phase. I came across some photos of this phase. Saeyeon described some difficulties at this point because there was so much detail in the logo. The logo was screen printed on to the title wall but all the lines did not come through she had to go back with a one-hair brush to fill in the details.

While some of the graphics are created in-house to save money, others are sent out to professional vendors. Here is a gallery of the process. Most of the titles are screen printed while the large drawings of figures are vinyl.

I love how these images are life size. The visitors feel like they are a part of the activities in the drawings. Not to mention that when blown up, these drawings create a nice contrast against the bright yellow paint that pops off the walls.

Before the lecture proceeded more than 5 minutes, Gondry stopped the interviewer in mid sentence to gripe about the glaring white pages left on the reserved seats. He went on about how the organizers of the event said it was a packed house yet there were papers dotting the auditorium which served as a major distraction.  Gondry stopped the interviewing process for a good five minutes before the seats were filled with eager artists and loyal fans who stayed to watch the lecture projected in an overflow room.

The last question that resonated with me is when Gondry was asked about language barriers. The interviewer said something like “do you ever find it hard to understand english” (something idiotic like that) and Gondry replied that he always understands except when he needs time to formulate a good answer, he will say “oh i do not understand can you rephrase your question…”

All in all I got a very good feeling about Gondry. He has an amazing ego-building body of work and yet he appears so humble and down to earth. He has a “matter of fact” tone about his art. If something didn’t go quite as planned he would say well that is just how t’is. The little flaws in his pieces give a more rich handmade character. Oh I aspire to have the same attitude about my work. It is important not to take yourself too seriously . So often we try to take all the credit for our art when in reality it is just an amalgum of our predecessors creations. We just take a specific cocktail of visual stimuli and repackage it in a more modern rendition of what has already been established.  But Michel Gondry’s cocktail is dynamic; it reaches the core of our most playful, childlike nature and exposes certian curriosities about the physical world. He brings the ephemeral and intangable into plain sight for our entertainment. I am inspired!

In other news, I went on an office field trip to the LACMA. The exhibit designer of LACMA lead our department on a tour. We arrived at the Pre-Colombian portion of the Latin American art wing. I must admit that I had no idea what to expect. I initially saw the undulating wooden walls, wrapping around the door frames, and thought it was a piece of art. It was impressive. But then I got to thinking; is this decoration or does it serve a purpose?

LACMA pre columbian art entrance

Jorge Pardo, a sculptor, designer and artist, aimed to accentuate the ancient in a unique way. He said the the bright hues (18 colors in all three galleries), would not take away from the pieces which are intrinsically interesting. Personally, I was taken by the oranges and yellows of the first room. The space was striking,  accentuated with Pardo’s ornamental lanterns that had to be hand assembled by the exhibit designers. But that’s just it, it way overpowered the art encased in the horizontal wooden material. With iridescent vertical 8 foot drapes hanging from the ceiling, the gallery looked more like a trendy Los Angeles martini bar that would soon look dated. The contrast between this ultra modern aesthetic and the ancient art was beautiful but I just don’t think it has staying power. When the slates collect dust and the unfinished board is smudged with fingerprints how will it look? In this photo notice how the panels create odd topographical shapes. C’mon the the stand in the center looks like a pregnant woman.

Gallery

I took a few photos of the lamps. I thought they would go nicely with my multi-colored IKEA particle board furniture.

Gallery Lamps

Most of the art was hiding behind these wooden panels.

Art is hiding

However, a nice contrast is created between the sculptures in the center of the gallery and the paneled walls.

ready for my close up

Here are the posters they came up with this last week: