The USS Midway Museum provides a scavenger hunt type activity for families with young children. It includes a trifold sheet with simple questions based on exhibits throughout the ship. Geared toward elementary school aged children, they are encouraged to write in their answers, and present it at the Information Booth when leaving the museum. A docent then "reviews" the sheet, and presents the child with a "Midway Jr. Flyer" wings pin.

This activity had previously only been available in English. But with visitors from around the world, the museum wanted a similar activity for non-English speaking families and their children as well. The museum's direction was to create a graphic/number-based scavenger hunt, for which text would be unnecessary to understand or play.

An easily recognized, child-friendly character graphic was desired for addition to 10 exhibits where it would serve as a cue to the children. Ten distinct (but universal) icon graphics were also needed as visual discriminators. Half were chosen by the museum from existing icons, and I designed the others based on the context of the exhibits.

Since the museum already had an English version of this activity, I decided to modify and adapt as many of the existing graphic elements as possible. I first created a new graphic based on the existing "deck crew character", and made it modular for easy changes. I also changed the dominant color theme of the trifold from green to blue. I wanted the international version to remain harmonious with the existing theme, yet have its own unique stylistic differences so the different versions were easily recognizable.

Albert Munoz was my museum liaison and co-developer on this project.

The outside of this new "international" trifold (above) includes the front cover, and two panels of pictographs, showing how to participate in the activity. Based on the other languages in which the museum's map is available, I added short phrases for: "Earn Your Wings", "How to Play", and "Turn in your paper!" I used Google Translate for those temporary translations, but they have not yet been verified or finalized.

Using the white on green numbers of the existing "family" audio tour stops, the interior of the trifold contains 10 images from different exhibit tour stops on the ship. I shot these temporary images to reflect the points of view that people following the audio tours would most likely encounter. In panels 301 and 321, I have already edited in an image of the cartoon character, as it would appear mounted on the corresponding audio tour stop sign.

As an example to users, the first panel image and its tour stop number are already matched to their icon. The numbered yellow and green signs differentiate the "regular" and "family" versions of the audio tours.

Obviously, not all of the above icons are my unique designs. But I didn't want the icons to be so literal that a child could simply match them to their exhibit photos without visiting the exhibits. My concern was that (given the lack of explanatory text) some families might not understand the concept - which was encouraging children to match the icons, numbers, and photos with the actual exhibits - versus separately filling out the trifold as though it were a school test. But in most cases, the museum preferred the more literal variants of the icon designs.

I created the images below in Adobe Illustrator and Sketch Up as design and assembly guides for mounting the figure variants onto the stanchions of the existing audio tour stop signs.