16 tips on how to design great museum exhibits
1. Shopping list: Create a shopping list of what you have to offer the visitor & then priorities their importance.
2.Special factor: What’s going to make your museum / museum exhibit different from all the others?
3.Space available: Calculate the exhibit space you have available for each story line or exhibits, especially important for travelling exhibitions where the space and configuration of space will change from venue to venue.
4.Access: Provide DDA (Disability Discrimination Act) requirements for access into your building, galleries, museum exhibition spaces, facilities and all exhibits.
5.Design team: It is essential to have the right team working on the project, curators, conservation, museum designers lighting designers need to gel if something special is to be created. Our creative design team is uniquely able to provide both museum and lighting design.
6.Conservation: What conservation issues do you need to consider for each exhibit.
7.Flexibility: Build in a level of flexibility for the future, who knows how things might change.
8.Apps: Everything with Apps seems to be the case these days. How smartphone and iPhone friendly will your exhibition be? (read more about museum Apps)
9.Content: Provide varying levels of information to appeal to different audiences and school curriculum where possible.
10.Bring to life: Nothing beats a personal tour with a curator who tells you a little about each object as you pass by, however that’s not possible so you need to use other means to engage the visitor with the story lines.
11.Eye candy: As mentioned in (previous article) the information should be appealing to the eye, drawing the visitor in.
12.Curiosity factor: You can make the mundane look so much more appealing if you handle curiosity factor well, think of the launch of a new car when they show you a little corner detail before the big unveiling.
13. Signage & path-finding: People need to be able to navigate easily, think about using colours and easy to remember symbols.
14. Lighting: There cannot be enough importance placed on good lighting design, it has the ability to make or destroy your whole project.
15. Visitor flow: Consider, do you want your visitors to be like mice in a maze and follow your set pattern or do you adopt the freedom to wander approach?
16. Ambient Noise: Control unwanted ambient noise with the choice of the right materials.
