Exhibition Design

Exhibition Design
Design Process
-Telling a story
-Concept development
-Design development
-Materials
-Media and technology
-Lighting and acoustic design
-Exhibition design and the environment
-Documentation

Telling a story
-All exhibitions have one important thing in common; they all tell a story.
-Creates a story from four elements; a narrative, a narrator, a path, and a context.
-Narrative: to determine the message that they wish to tell the audience. The message becomes a story with a clear beginning, middle, and end.
-Narrator: a narrator is needed to drive the story forward. The narrator can be created using any number of mediums, such as text, graphics, or technology. Most exhibitions employ multiple narrative mediums.
-Path: The path gives the story its structure, transforming the narrative into a three-dimensional space, which brings the story to life for each visitor.
-The space must be organized into a sequence that relates to the story and visitors who will experience the exhibition.
-The sequence of experiences can be arranged around a timeline, theme, or hierarchy; any structure that has a consistent logic.
-Exhibitions provide this sequence of experiences in segments, building up the whole story, but never allowing the visitors to see the entire structure at once.
-Revealing the story step-by-step to engage the visitor.
-Context: Always neglected part of the storytelling in exhibition design is the external context.
-It is integrated into a building or landscape.
-How the visitor approaches and engages with the exhibition is as important.
-The visitor’s introduction to the exhibition is not a part of the story but is crucial to preparing the visitor for the experience.

Concept Development
-In sketches drawing put down on paper ready to be developed. It is hard work, research, planning and editing giving the direction:
-Managing expectations: Setting ground rules and expectations for the design process like project budget with the client’s expectations. Research includes accumulation an analysis.
-More ideas: To provide as many ideas as possible and explore a wide range of issues. This is the stage where lighting, material, and technology specialists can make the impact on the final design.
-Distillation: The difficult process of distilling all these ideas into two or five most powerful concepts. The final one will be the best concept by reviewing.
Design Development
-With the approved design, the design will proceed to the selection of materials, colors, special equipment, and graphics to define the character.
-To consider finishes, hardware, fabrication details, lighting, acoustics, computer software development for controls and interactive etc……..
-Text the selected exhibition components through mock-ups and / or prototypes and finally a through budge analysis.

Materials
-It can be extremes at the low and high price ranges.
-Closely tied to the budget of the exhibition as well as its size and context.
-Trade shows and showrooms are mostly beautifully with high budget and best materials.
-Temporary exhibitions are mostly with inexpensive materials - such as vinyl print graphics, wallboard, and laminate.
-Not to choose materials just to meet the budget. Designer need to prioritize the quality of materials for the task of the exhibition.
-Skill of handing materials, stone, bronze, and glass require specialized craftsmen to detail and install.
Media and Technology
-Integrating media and technology into exhibitions is a factor in the design process.
-Media technology can be hugely expensive to install and time consuming for planning and updating.
-Three important themes when selecting a media strategy: Precedent, balance and management.
Lighting and acoustic design
-Lighting and acoustics set mood for a space, affect how objects will be displayed and how information will be read.
-Natural lighting and Artificer lighting to create exciting spaces. Color temperature of accent lighting can be use to create a manipulate mood.
-Designer’s role is not only to understand how sound establishes a mood and affects the narrative within an exhibition, but also to manage the transition between noisy public space and contemplative quiet area.
-Specialists can be brought in early if it requires extensive expert design collaboration.

Documentation
-Concept documents
-Physical and computer models, storyboards and sketches that show how exhibitions are to be navigated and experienced.
-It is important that these has to be produce as professional as possible and clear to serve as a guide for the exhibition.
-Design documentation
-Communication medium for explaining how a designer would like their exhibition to look to the contractor and experts
-Show detail, text, scale and material specification.
-Most important skill a designer needs is not documentation knowledge, but confidence in their ability to communicate intent.
-Shop drawings, as built, prototypes and photographs
-These are drawings for the contractor to communicate with the designer in the specific way the exhibition to be built.

Design Standards

-Upon completion of an exhibition design, a set of documented standards are often needed to ensure that the exhibition is maintained as a high quality.
-Trade shows traveling shows require extensive instructions for erection and dismantling.
-It is put into a design manual contains the design element, standard for howthe story must be told and new additions made.

References
- What is exhibition design?
Jan Lorenc / Lee Skolnick / Craig Berger
- Exhibition Design
Arian Mostaedi