National Parks

Old Faithful Visitor Education Center (Happy Holidays)

Work shown was completed while I was a designer at Christopher Chadbourne & Associates.

This vintage Yellowstone ornament, a gift from my dad, holds extra significance because of my work on the design of the Old Faithful Visitor Education Center in Wyoming. The Education Center held its Dedication Ceremony and Grand Re-Opening earlier this year, on August 25.

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The Old Faithful Visitor Education Center teaches the science behind Yellowstone National Park’s stunning hydrothermal and geological features.

As part of the Christopher Chadbourne & Associates design team, I worked on Design Development, and the Production Services phase. Ernesto Mendoza was the senior graphic designer.

Here’s a project description at SEGD that goes into detail about the design considerations and process, and an article from inhabitat with more photographs.

(The good photographs (i.e. those to the left and below, and the three at the bottom of this post) are by Jay Rosenblatt.)

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I took on a lead design role for the Yellowstone is a Natural Laboratory area, and developed the visual concept, inspired by scientists’ gridded field notebooks. The entire exhibit, and this area in particular, used many interactive elements to explain complicated scientific concepts in an accessible way.

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Here’s an elevation of the Norris Geyser Basin section (the graphic design was tweaked after this):

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And because it’s fun to look back, here are some photos from a shop visit at Pacific Studio. It’s always exciting to see designs mocked up like this. (Not as exciting as the final exhibit, of course!) We used a lot of direct print on frosted P95 acrylic, and digital prints applied to sign blank (wrapped with an overlam), for graphic panels.

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Post updated in January 2021. Broken links have been fixed. This post was originally published at theexhibitdesigner.com on 26 December 2010.

Old Faithful Visitor Center’s grand opening

I took a trip out West last week, with my colleagues from Christopher Chadbourne & Associates, for the grand opening of the Old Faithful Visitor Education Center in Yellowstone National Park. Exciting! Post soon!

I have a somewhat hefty backlog of content for the blog. Some of it dates to when we were wearing knit hats and snow boots. I hope to have it all up asap.

Update: I got most of them. Changing Earth | Electricity | State of Deception | Cars, Culture, and the City | America’s Mayor | Samurai in New York | New England Habitats | Mass MoCA | Old Faithful Visitor Center

Post updated in January 2021. Broken links have been fixed. This post was originally published at theexhibitdesigner.com on 29 August 2010.