Recently I was approached by the Natural History Museum to help out on the exhibition Coral Reefs: Secret Cities of the Sea. krow communications had already created the wonderful campaign for the show – my brief was to adapt their work for entrance and ticket desk graphics. Explaining the concept behind the campaign, krow say ‘the idea … is to highlight the similarities between jobs that keep a city running and the roles of different species within the coral reefs.’
I have to admit I felt the pressure of doing the campaign justice while making the graphics work at exhibition scale. For me, narrative and movement are key to compelling exhibition design and looking at the architecture, I decided to make all elements in the composition – the seabed and sea creatures – move towards the central entrance.
In a lovely coincidence I discovered that one of my long-term clients, Horniman Museum and Gardens, were involved on the content side. Take at look at this fascinating time-lapse vid of the aquarium build for the show:
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/aquarium-time-lapse.html
This really was a great project and the first time I’ve worked with the Natural History Museum. Not only was the work exciting, I tackled the biggest Photoshop file I’ve ever come across … Captain Ahab’s got nothing on me!
Coral Reefs: Secret Cities of the Sea
Natural History Museum
27 March - 13 September 2015
www.nhm.ac.uk/coralreefs
All images copyright of Natural History Museum.
(post by Tanya)