The Buzzards Are Coming: Designing the Postcard

After the successful launch of our exhibit website and social media sites the Marketing/Publicity Team (Desiree, Stevy, and myself) has shifted from web based to print based media with the creation of the exhibition postcard. From our discussions with Mike Watts and other members of the Tarble staff it is clear that the postcard is one of the main promotional materials for the exhibit, making it a key component in our marketing/publicity plan. This is also something that is an important part of nearly all exhibits. In Artist Emerging, fellow exhibit blogger Deanna described some of the main points for good postcard design. Here is an example:

Put a striking image on the front: Start with a great photograph or slide of your work. Pick the best piece from your show and get a great shot of it. An intriguing detail shot can be interesting and mysterious. 

In the early days of our research we (Dr. RP and HA class 2014) came up with three images taken from the Buzzard Scrapbook and the textile collection at the Tarble. These images (shown below) represent the themes of the exhibit and visually show the ‘Text and Textiles’. These images were compiled into one banner which became the main design or “brand”, to quote Cate, for the Text and Textiles exhibit as seen on our website and social media. The first is a picture of Robert (Guy) and Irene Buzzard taken from a newspaper article highlighting their interests and skills in weaving. The second shows an example of huck weaving, probably created by Guy Buzzard during the early 1950s. The final image was used for the text at the bottom, which describes the beginnings of the Buzzard family. 

        

 

Part of our struggles throughout the exhibition process has been to make the Buzzards come alive, to fly off the pages of their texts if you will. In order to do this, the exhibition and education teams have been working on incorporating different color combinations and label designs to add visual appeal to the objects and give the e-Gallery some pizazz. Our team (marketing/publicity) has been working closely with Jamie (Jo) the graphics designer at the Tarble who was crucial in making this happen. We came to her late last week with just these images and a basic concept for the design. Here is what she came up with and like Amanda said in her recent blog, seeing it makes the exhibit so much more real!

               Here’s the back with our exhibit info and blurb:

 

Desiree also researched QR codes and worked with Jo to add it into the design on the back. This code will lead back to our website and provide connections between our physical and digital media. 

While this is still the first draft of the exhibit postcard we are very excited to present it in class tomorrow and gain feedback from our fellow HA students and Dr. RP. For those who live on campus at EIU or in the Charleston/Mattoon area you’ll be seeing these around campus and in the mail in the next month or so, so get ready. The Buzzards are coming to Charleston!

Check our our website at: http://www.eiu.edu/ha/exhibits/2014/home.html

http://artistemerging.blogspot.com/2006/10/postcards.html

 

Who knew there are so many different shades of brown?!

This has been a week of exciting changes to the exhibition design and layout!

As Caitlin explained last week, she and I re-learned photoshop in order to format our labels.  The original label plan involved a black font on a bone colored background.  After a lengthy discussion with the class and our partners at the Tarble, it was decided that a brown font on the bone background would be more suitable. This will allow the labels to coordinate nicely with the artifacts, as well as the brown carpet and slightly off-white walls of the Tarble gallery. 

This change in label colors then brought up the suggestion that perhaps the photographs in the exhibition should all be sepia-toned rather than left in their original black-and-white or color form.  This became a heated debate between classmates with votes split 50/50 between sepia-toning and original.  Finally, it was agreed that all of the photographs will be sepia-toned, because as a classmate pointed out, “everything looks better in sepia!”  After spending some time with the Buzzard photos and the sepia option on photoshop, I am amazed by many different shades of brown available!  Here is an example of our bone label background, brown font color, three chronological section colors, and a sepia-toned Buzzard family photo, created by Brittany Contratto.

The exhibition committee also had the opportunity to meet with Mike Schuetz in the gallery space at the Tarble to discuss wall panel measurements. After measuring the space and realizing that the gallery is really quite small in person, we have decided to shorten the width of our panels to allow for more space for the visitor to move around.  

The exhibition team is planning to start pulling artifacts this week and is beginning the fabrication of mounts in the very near future!  Our labels and pictures, all in the correct shades of brown, will be submitted to Media Services for printing on Tuesday.  The exhibition is suddenly feeling very real!! 

Social Media: A Connection to the World

Social Media has now become the new technological expansion to reach an audience. As fellow alumni Andy Supperich from the Historical Administration program (Class of 1999-2000/01) suggested, one must keep up with the growing technology in the museum field as it becomes more and more important to promote exhibits. Before, a museum would just send out information pamphlets of their institution to Welcome Centers, but as the future of technology has increased and influenced the public, the new way to attract the people to visit a museum is by social media pathways.

As the publicity team in the historical administration group begins to create social media links to reach a broader audience to visit our exhibit, it is interesting to note how important it is in the museum field itself. As we have just finished creating our website for the “Text & Textiles: Crafting the Lives of Guy & Irene Buzzard,” it has  been a great experience to learn to use these social media links  to attract our broader audience.

One amazing job occupation I just learned about while in our Leadership in Museums II course with Mrs. Pat Miller was how important social media is to an institution, such as the Field Museum.For example, Jane Hanna is the Social Media Strategist at the Field Museum in Chicago, where her job consists of being in charge of updating the social media pages the Field Museum has. One fascinating social media outlet that they are using is Facebook, which their page alone consists of 93,266 “Likes.” One thing to note is how with the cutbacks on museum faculty, research positions are often one of the positions being laid off and as we see here, they are still dedicated in having a social media strategists part of their faculty. It might be more important to an institution to keep a person like this since they  help reach and keep these network connections to the public to receive more visitors at their institution.

(Click on the image to view Jane Hanna’s Profile page) 

As we continue on our goal to promote our exhibit using these social media pathways, Facebook seems to be the primary site as well for us to reach our audience. Just since Saturday, February 15th, 2014 when we launched our Facebook page, we have already reached 50 “Likes.” The great thing about using Facebook is that there is already a community of Historical Administration at EIU! facebook page that allows us to contact all the previous alumni from the program to our exhibit. One thing we plan to promote on our Facebook page is our “Buzzard Beacon Flashback Fridays” which are excerpts from Dr. Buzzard’s family newsletter. This has also been a great way to showcase the progress we have done in creating this exhibit as a group throughout the year.

(Click on the image to view the Facebook page)

Other social media websites we are also using are Pinterest and Twitter. Pinterest itself is very fascinating because it is both a way for us to promote the Buzzard’s text and textile work, but also give a picture/glimpse  of what artifacts are included in our exhibit. As the publicity team begins to see what kind of things can attract the publics attention to view our sites, we came up with three main events we shall use to promote our exhibit throughout the week. First off we have “Textile Tuesdays” where we will promote and feature one of our main objects from the exhibit. This would be great to use on Pinterest because we get to create “boards” on our page which will then contain individual “Pins” that people can see and learn about the objects.

(Click on the image to view the Pinterest page)

Since our exhibit is called “Text and Textiles,” we all agreed it would be a great idea to also promote the “text” in the exhibit and call it “Buzzard Beacon Flashback Friday.” What that would consists of is us going to the Buzzard Beacon newsletters that Dr. Buzzard wrote to his family for several years.

Lastly, the other important promotion event we will create is “Big News Wednesdays” which will alternate every 2 weeks to give our audience an update of our whole exhibit as a group or feature one of the three groups in our exhibition course. This will give us both the advantage to keep track of what work we have been doing and also share with others that might have been in the Historical Administration program before us a “flashback” of what they did when they created their exhibit.

Now Twitter. Twitter to me is very interesting and fascinating, but also something I have never had to use before this publicity/social media launch event. I know it consists of #’s and “tweets” but besides that, it has been interesting to learn how to do.  The great thing about Twitter has been that we can have it synced to our Pinterest page but also we can reach a broader audience that might not use Facebook.  The only complaint I have about Twitter myself is that it is hard to write a 160 character blurb for our post but this also gives a great lesson as we have had to learn ourselves while in the exhibit course of how to be precise and on target when writing labels for our artifacts. One humbling observation that our group had was that our first follower on Twitter had been a man from Moscow, Russia, therefore our challenge to reach a broader audience was a success! We have not just reached the local level but also the international level at this point with the help of social media websites.

(Click on the image to view the Twitter page)

If you are interested in following one of our three social media sites:
Facebook: www.facebook.com/Textandtextiles2014

Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/textandtextiles/

Twitter: twitter.com/Buzzard2014

And don’t forget to check out our website as well at: www.eiu.edu/ha/exhibits/2014/home.html

Putting it all Together (or at least beginning to): Designing Labels

As far as labels go, compared to the education team, those of us in the exhibition team have it easy.  They provide us with the text, which by this time has gone through many, many edits, and we turn it into the actual labels that will be present in our exhibit.  To do this, each individual label has to be created in Photoshop.  And, while we did have an hour-long training session on the program a few weeks ago, the last time I truly used it was way back in high school when I was taking a photography class.  Needless to say, the changes in the program over the years – not to mention using for different purposes – threw me for a bit when I sat down to turn half of the text labels into Photoshop documents.  Amanda and I downloaded a free version of Photoshop rather than paying for it with a month’s worth of food money.  When I opened the program up last night, I was expecting to see something like this:

which is what Photoshop normally looks like.  Instead, I saw this:

.

Needless to say, I was a bit surprised.  Luckily, this program was fairly self-explanatory and easy to work with.  While we did have a few problems with the program – namely figuring out its peculiarities regarding changing font size and capitalizing letters – we were able to quickly put together the labels.

While we still have to discuss background color with the rest of the teams, overall, our finished result looks quite nice, if I do say so myself.

 

Several things had to be kept in mind while we were creating our labels, namely, readability and ADA requirements.  Because of this, we chose to use Geneva, a sans serif typescript, and 20 pt font for our main text, with the headings at 28 pt.  All of this makes it easier for everybody to read.  Helping us make these decisions was Beverly Serrell’s book, Exhibit Labels: An Interpretive Approach.  More information on guidelines for creating accessible exhibit design can be found on the Smithsonian’s website at: http://www.si.edu/Accessibility/SGAED .

Once our label design has been approved by the other teams, Dr. R-P, and the Tarble staff, we can move to printing!  Media Services at Eastern will print our labels and help us mount them so they are ready to go for Installation Week in April, something we are all very much looking forward to.

From Classroom to Studio: The Exhibition Class’ Fabrication Workshop

Today, instead of working in the classroom, our exhibition class participated in a hands-on fabrication workshop. We ventured off to the Sculpture Studio at the EIU’s Doudna Center. We were greeted by Mike Schuetz of the Tarble Arts Center, art professor Jeff Boshart, and retired Historical Administration professor Rick Riccio who now runs an exhibit consulting firm. They introduced the class to various exhibition processes, techniques, and tips. In rotating groups of three to four students, we learned how to create wooden frames, artifact mounts, and cold mounting graphics.

First, we first learned the importance of safety while working in the shop. There are plenty of sharp cutting tools and wood scraps that could get in the way of our work. Each group learned how to make a different type of wooden frame. I never realized how many endless the options we would have creating different types of frames. The frames could also have dual purpose: they can serve as a pedestal or even become a box! For our upcoming exhibition and future exhibition endeavors, these frames could come in handy, and then be re-purposed over the years.

Artifact mounts made from Plexiglas offer unique and creative opportunities in exhibitions. In the workshop, we learned how to use the Watts Strip Heater. It slowly heats the Plexiglas. Just before the Plexiglas begins to bubble, you bend it to the angle you want. Also, a good tip was to bend it slightly more than needed because the Plexiglas sometimes flexes back. Making the Plexiglas mounts was much simpler than I thought it would be!

Lastly we learned about cold mounting graphics. Out of all the fabrication processes from the workshop, this is likely going to be our most used process in our museum careers! Here we learned the importance of using a steel ruler with a steel blade. Professor Boshart explained how metals aren’t just metals. Using a steel blade without an aluminum, wood, or brass ruler as a guide increases the chances of messing up and getting ourselves cut. After we cut out the graphics, we used a special double-sided adhesive to mount them on the foam board.  We then were able to attach the graphics to the foam board with quite ease.

The fabrication workshop was great as we learned basic fabrication skills. Not only will this be helpful for our exhibition, but also in our future as museum personal. Want to learn more about exhibition fabrication? Check out Mount-making for Museum Objects by Robert Barclay, André Bergeron, and Carole Dignardthat. It explains simple to complex mounting and unique ways for creating displays!

Showcasing your Findings: How to Share the Learning Process with the Audience

In the process of creating an exhibit, researchers often become experts in the objects they are presenting. With this type of exhibit, this may mean learning the techniques and methods the artist used to decorate the textiles. Embroidery, weaving and tatting are heavily featured in this exhibit.

     

 During the course of my research of these guest towels featured above, I found that Irene used a technique called “huck embroidery” to create the unique designs that are only seen on the front. The back of the piece is free from knots or stray threads.

This technique was new to me, so I took it upon myself to research how to do it. After reading the few instructions there are, I purchased fabric and embroidery thread to try out this new technique.

Huck embroidery is stitched entirely along the top of the fabric, so stitches are never seen on the back of the piece. This made it ideal for guest towels, as the embroiderer does not have to worry about mistakes showing on the back of the piece.

Designs seem limited, as there are only two types of stitches. Most patterns consisted of straight lines and sharp turns, though loops can be achieved using this technique. It is an easy and relaxing stitch.

It also became very addicting!

After all this hands on research, the idea was put out there to share this technique, as well as others, with an audience who may also not be as familiar with it. It doesn’t necessarily fit in with the overarching storyline of the exhibit, and docents may not always be available to explain the technique in detail to inquisitive minds. An optional, but reliable way to explain the techniques  needed to be a part of the exhibit, without intruding to much upon it.

After deliberating over many different options, including having an ipod display a video in the exhibit or to have a live demonstration, the education team decided that a QR code that links the visitor to a page on the website with a video explaining the technique and more material would be the best way to present the huck embroidery demonstration. However, there are plans in the works to have both a live demonstration and video showcasing the art of weaving on a loom similar to the one Dr. Buzzard and Irene used.

Stay tuned as we film and upload this exciting interactive content onto our website!

For more information on Huck Embroidery, please visit these websites:

http://www.nordicneedle.net/stitching-techniques/huck-swedish-weaving/

http://www.nordicneedle.net/2010/09/24/straight-stitch-for-huck/

http://www.nordicneedle.com/newsletters/stash/10.shtml

Huck How-To

My Digital Life, Part II: Website Launch

Last week we took a brief look at the world of HTML, CSS, and Dreamweaver from a beginner’s eye. For this post, we will view a few sites that help newcomers design webpages.

First off, to digress a bit, I love graduate school. Yes, there is far too much reading to finish (over 1000 pages last week) but the things you learn take you completely out of your comfort zone. Case and point, designing a website with no real previous experience in coding.

I am part of the Marking and Publicity team for the Historical Administration Program at Eastern Illinois University (along with the talented Stevy Hernandez and Sarah DePuy).  We have various tasks to complete throughout the semester such as: create a publicity plan, design the exhibit website/Facebook/Twitter/Pinterest, produce press releases and a trailer for the exhibit, as well as coordinate the opening night. I am happy to say the website is complete! The site will be updated throughout the semester with educational programming and insights into our exhibit design process.

Text & Textiles [There were some initial problems uploading our site. This link will be updated when we solve those issues]

The world of coding is an interesting place. There are numerous ways to do one aspect of a page. What amazes me is how coding like this…

Can turn into an interactive menu bar like this…

 

Since none of the members of the exhibit group are expert HTML and CSS designers, we decided to use a free responsive template from the site HTML5 UP. The responsive aspect was important for the publicity team because we wanted a clean look no matter what device a person used to view the site. If you wanted to make a webpage from scratch, CSS-Tricks has coding for many aspects of web design. Additionally, the site Font Awesome allowed us to change the icons next to the menu names. This can be a usual visual tool for any site. You can see how we coded these in the first image (fa fa-home, fa fa-calendar, etc.).

Anyone who has the time to take a course, workshop, or even watch a video about website design should do it. It is one of the most rewarding assignments I have undertaken in my graduate career. Best yet, the process is not complete. Stay tuned to Text & Textiles for updates on our exhibit development throughout spring of 2014.

Bringing out the Seam Ripper: Drafting and Editing Exhibit Labels

     When sewing a dress or embroidering a design, occasionally the stitching does not turn out quite right. When this happens, the seam ripper comes out to pull apart the erroneous stitches. The seam ripper is both a beloved and hated tool amongst crafters. It pulls apart stitches that had taken time and effort to make, however it is an essential tool as it ensures a cleaner, unflawed end-product.

     Like the seam ripper, editing labels, is not necessarily the fun aspect of creating an exhibit, but it is an essential part. Drafting and editing the labels that will be easily comprehended by all ages will guarantee that the themes and overall exhibit structure are understood by the audience.

     Artifact labels have to meet a criteria in order to communicate exhibit goals and themes. The vocabulary has to be appropriate for a wide range of visitors, from students and faculty, to alumni, community members and, in the case of our exhibit, crafters. Occasionally, further research is done in order to enhance an artifact label to invoke audience participation and conversations. However, exhibit labels can’t be huge blocks of text. It is recommended that artifact labels are short, usually within 50-75 words, while section labels can be longer.

     Fifty words may seem like a lot, but it is in reality a very small space to communicate ideas. Words have to be carefully selected and edited to ensure sentences both tell about an object, as well as convey exhibit themes and provoke audience conversations.

     In the course of constructing our exhibit, the education team is in charge of editing labels, as well as drafting new labels as the need arises. We send our edits to Dr. Rymsza-Pawlowska, who then edits and returns the labels with new suggestions. It can become a never ending process, but there is a deadline. Edits should be done well before installation week so the exhibit team has time to mount them for the exhibit.  Until then, changes will continually be made to the labels to ensure our themes come across.

     Editing exhibit labels is a lot like taking the seam ripper to the dress. Though it may seem like a tedious and time consuming step, it leads to a much cleaner end product.

Here are pictures of Erin and Cate of the Education team at work researching, drafting and editing artifact labels.

 

      Cate is researching for artifact labels in order to add context to objects both within the lives of the Buzzards as well as in order to connect them with the larger cultural themes of the 1950s. 

 

     Erin types out the changes to the labels and proofreads them for errors. Catching any small spelling or grammar errors as you type the label drafts makes later edits easier. 

     As an exercise, try to write about your favorite item and what it means to you and your broader culture within 50-75 words.  This article from the Minnesota Historical Society also explains more about exhibit labels:

http://www.mnhs.org/about/publications/docs_pdfs/ExhibitLabels.pdf

Using Google SketchUp to Create an Exhibition Layout

Museum exhibition layouts can be created in various ways.  My experiences have included hand drafting, AutoCAD, and Revit, but until recently I was introduced to Google SketchUp. Compared to AutoCAD and Revit, Google SketchUp provides a free, more accessible, and simplified architectural software. For our exhibition with the Tarble Arts Center, we decided to use Google SketchUp for our exhibition Text and Textiles: Crafting the Lives of Guy and Irene Buzzard.

 

Entrance to Exhibition

 

Following the design briefs from last semester’s exhibition class, I created a mock-up of the exhibition. Luckily, the Tarble Arts Center has a template already created of the room, so I just created the panels, added props, and placed artifacts.  With three different time periods for the exhibition, there are three different color coordinated panels to denote the certain time periods.

 

 

Completed Layout

 

One aspect of Google SketchUp that I really like and is very helpful with the exhibition layout is the 3D Warehouse. The Warehouse is a public collection of models from furniture, books, computers, looms, and basically anything thing you could think of all create by people all over the world. I was able to place a chair, loom, dress form, a computer, and table instead of creating the models myself. Another helpful tool was the simple import of the artifacts to create mock-up of the panels.  The artifacts and images can be created to scale or enlarged to a certain size.

 

 

Imported Artifacts in Google SketchUp

 

Google SketchUp also allows for a unique presentation of the exhibition through scenes or the camera feature. Using the animation feature, I added scenes, which all the images on this blog entry are created from. When changing scenes, Google SketchUp automatically and smoothly moves through out the mock-up from scene to scene. This creates a video like presentation of the exhibition. I am still learning how to work the camera feature. I’ve learned that you place “cameras” throughout the exhibition to look around at a specific eye level or “walk through” the virtual exhibition.

 

Anyone is able to learn Google SketchUp, but it does take time and practice to harbor all its tools and utilities. For museums, Google SketchUp helps to utilize museum exhibitions from space, design, layout, and presentations. You can make your mock-ups as detailed or simple as you would prefer. For further help, I suggest Google SketchUp’s YouTube channel, which includes several tutorials for creating simple to complex layouts. Enjoy designing and expanding your creativity while using Google SketchUp!

My Digital Life, Part I: HTML, CSS, and Dreamweaver

Codes. Sure, I know how to do some HTML tricks. I learned it in the days of Myspace, when I could decorate my page with music videos and colorful banners. Sadly, my training ended there. However, that all changed this past week when I took a Dreamweaver workshop at Eastern Illinois University.

Of course, to understand the program Dreamweaver, one must also know the basics of HTML and CSS. HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language and allows a user to customize fonts, colors, images, and links for webpages. Cascading Style Sheets, or CSS, provides elaborate formatting options to the structures that HTML creates. These are very simple definitions because, to be honest, there is a lot I do not know about the world of codes.

And yet, there is something comforting about coding. Follow the rules and you can generate an alluring layout that draws viewers in with the tap of a few keys. Everyday we search the web, grazing too many sites to keep track of. But can any of you truly say you appreciate the way that hover state and those anchor tags really completed the page you just breezed through?

Another aspect to site formatting that I never knew about, but now have a profound appreciation for, is responsive web design. To design a webpage that looks professional on a mobile devise or tablet, you need to create a CSS template that will modify for smaller screens. This is a vital aspect to any site since our modern web user carries their mobile devise as if it is an extension of themselves. These devices are pulled out numerous times a day to search anything and everything. As a result, having a functional mobile site is a necessity to keep an audience.

(Image from Chris Converse’s lesson on Lynda.com, titled Creating a Responsive Web Design)

So, why do a week long crash course in HTML, CSS, and Dreamweaver? Ah, because that is the way of graduate school! Part II of this series will have a finished project to show, a website for the Historical Administration’s spring exhibit. Stay tuned for this work-in-progress that is My Digital Life.

Special Thanks To:

Center for Academic Technology Support for a insightful Dreamweaver session

And Lynda for answering so many questions with intuitive lessons