Ewing Manor Exhibition Design
In Design Streak Studio, my team was tasked with creating signage for the exhibition “Stowaway with the Ewings” at the Ewing Cultural Center in Bloomington. IL. My role in this project was to create the 20”x 80” template used on totem banners that marked the different sections of the exhibit and a 143”x 68” map to visualize the world tour.
The visual elements I applied within each design were designed with close reference to the branding & design of the event’s master flyer to create a sense of cohesion between all exhibition materials. Each design choice in these pieces was made with close consultation with the manor’s board of directors to ensure the best representation of the cultural center’s curatorial work.
Exhibition Design
Adobe Illustrator | Various Sizes | Print
”Stowaway with the Ewings”
“Stowaway with the Ewings was a limited-time exhibition held at Ewing Manor in Bloomington, Illinois. It focused on a collection of artifacts from all around the world gathered by the manor’s original residents on a world tour in 1925.
Design Streak Studio was responsible for creating the branding and exhibition signage designs for the exhibit. The previous Design Streak class developed the branding, while my class was responsible for designing the displays and signage in the actual exhibit space.
Exhibit promo poster (not my design)
Image courtesy of Ewing Cultural Center
Totem Banner
For such a large-scale project, signage design was divided among the Design Streak Team as per the client’s specifications.
I was tasked with creating the template for the 20”x 80” vertical totem banner signs in the exhibition space. Each totem banner would accompany a case with artifacts from specific regions around the world. While each member was assigned to create a different “region totem”, I designed the base that each person used to house the provided image and body copy.
I was also tasked with designing one of five banners to provide information about the manor’s Chinese relics. Red, often considered a lucky color in China, is used dominantly to complement the rich cultural history of the objects.
Tour Map
The second signage item I designed for this exhibit was the Ewing family wolrd tour map.
Displayed at the entrace of the exhibit hall, this map was one of the first things visitors saw as they began the tour. It is very large, at 143”x68” and served as an infographic on the Ewing family’s 1924-1925 world tour.
The original 1924 travel map was used as a base, with eye-catching visual graphics overlayed to show the tour route and pinpoit important destination stops. All of the graphics used for this map tied in with the color palette and imagery with close consideration of the exhibit’s promotional branding.