Creating Museum Exhibits For The Villa Philmonte
JULY - AUGUST 2022
The Idea
The final stop on tours is our gallery. A room filled with exhibits along the walls allowing guests to read more about the family and ask other questions. By the time I became a tour guide in 2022 many of the exhibits were over 20 years old with peeling lamination and scuff marks. Museum curator Rory Crofton wanted to replace them. I volunteered to help.
On Pencil & Paper
We started mid June but it was going to be a few weeks before we had access to a computer with Adobe, until then there were other matters to take care of. I began by scouring for inspiration. At our staff center we had boxes of old National Geographic’s filled with colorful infographics just like we would be doing at the Villa. I went through stacks of these using post it notes to mark pages of interest. I made note of everything I did or didn’t like about their graphics and how I could incorporate that into our new exhibits.
Measurements & Photos
The next step was finding out how much space we had to work with. At every section we were replacing I took a tape measure and measured the size of the area. Once done I grabbed a sketchbook, wrote down all of the dimensions and began drawing with pen and paper different sketches for possible layouts. After doing sketches I began looking through the family’s old photo albums in our archives and making note of one use. All of the ones of note I scanned one at a time on our small HP printer.
The Computer Work
Finally by the 2nd week of July we had a 2015 Dell PC with Illustrator, InDesign and Photoshop on it. Day 1 with the computer I used Illustrator to recreate the logos of both The Waite Phillips Company and Phillips 66. so impressed were they with my quick recreation of the logos, from then on out the Curator and Assistant Curator helped me put far more effort into finishing this project successfully.
Over the next several weeks, in-between giving tours and Rory using the computer for management, I jumped on for sometime just a few minutes at a time to create everything digitally. By Between mid July and August 12th all of the designs below were created by myself in Illustrator, InDesign and Photoshop while working as a tour guide.
Reviews From Managment
When presented to the management team at the National Museum of Scouting, the team was incredibly impressed. They considered them “very well done” and “highly professional for such a short time frame”.
To see the exhibits my designs will be replacing, click the link below and take a virtual tour of the Ground Floor