Working as a graphic designer for the William Benton Museum of Art was a huge privilege, and I am grateful for the opportunity. I learned how much I enjoy working with museums and art to create positive visitor experiences. This was also an amazing opportunity to work on civil rights exhibitions that I am passionate about.
As a graphic designer for The Benton, I created exhibition identities, wall labels, promotional graphics, and an online website exhibition for the museum. Working for The Benton taught me a lot about exhibition and web design. My favorite part about the job was being able to learn about different artists and their artwork. I would always start by doing informational and visual research about the artist and their work for each exhibition identity I created. Once I felt like I knew enough about the artist, I would continue my research on different typefaces that I thought blended well with each artist and their work. Two examples of exhibition identities I created are shown to the right and below.
Kathe Kollwitz was a German artist that specialized in painting, printmaking, and sculpture. This exhibition showcased over 100 of her prints and drawings from The Benton’s collection.
Kathe’s artwork was focused on the civil injustice happening in her life. She lived through three political regimes, the German Empire, the Weimar Republic, and the Third Reich. She lost her son Peter to World War I and her grandson to World War II. Many of her wood carvings focus on her anti-war message after WWI. She hoped her art would prevent war in the future through the emotional sacrifices and suffering depicted in her work.
The typeface I chose to use for this identity was Optima. German designer Hermann Zapf designed this typeface. Italian Gravestones inspired Zapf to create Optima. He also lived through the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich and fought in WWII. I thought this was a fitting typeface to use with Kathe Kollwitz because of the parallels between the artists and what they went through. Along with the fact that optima was inspired by gravestones, and it is used on many gravestones today, like the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
The colors I wanted to keep consistent with her wood carvings to keep cohesion between the art and the type. The very restraining medium of wood also inspired the rectangles and lines around the type. She found that wood carvings were most effective in communicating the suffering she wanted the audience to feel. All the lines in her prints are very rigid, and I wanted to keep to that structure.
The Human Epoch: Living in the Anthropocene was an online exhibition I created. This exhibition was designed for an introductory environmental literacy, and science course offered at UConn. The work is oriented around the concept that human beings are now the dominant geological agent. In the 1950s, the “Great Acceleration” occurred with improving science, technology, energy use, the human population, urbanization, and species extinctions. This time is debated as the beginning of the Anthropocene era because of its significant changes in geological strata and climate change.
Based on the “Great Acceleration” that the human race was going through, I oriented the art pieces with a timeline so the reader could clearly tell the sequence of events. I also broke down the paintings into their respective eras throughout this time period so the information is easier to digest.
Working as a graphic designer for the William Benton Museum of Art was a huge privilege, and I am grateful for the opportunity. I learned how much I enjoy working with museums and art to create positive visitor experiences. This was also an amazing opportunity to work on civil rights exhibitions that I am passionate about.
As a graphic designer for The Benton, I created exhibition identities, wall labels, promotional graphics, and an online website exhibition for the museum. Working for The Benton taught me a lot about exhibition and web design. My favorite part about the job was being able to learn about different artists and their artwork. I would always start by doing informational and visual research about the artist and their work for each exhibition identity I created. Once I felt like I knew enough about the artist, I would continue my research on different typefaces that I thought blended well with each artist and their work. Two examples of exhibition identities I created are shown to the right and below.
Kathe Kollwitz was a German artist that specialized in painting, printmaking, and sculpture. This exhibition showcased over 100 of her prints and drawings from The Benton’s collection.
Kathe’s artwork was focused on the civil injustice happening in her life. She lived through three political regimes, the German Empire, the Weimar Republic, and the Third Reich. She lost her son Peter to World War I and her grandson to World War II. Many of her wood carvings focus on her anti-war message after WWI. She hoped her art would prevent war in the future through the emotional sacrifices and suffering depicted in her work.
The typeface I chose to use for this identity was Optima. German designer Hermann Zapf designed this typeface. Italian Gravestones inspired Zapf to create Optima. He also lived through the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich and fought in WWII. I thought this was a fitting typeface to use with Kathe Kollwitz because of the parallels between the artists and what they went through. Along with the fact that optima was inspired by gravestones, and it is used on many gravestones today, like the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
The colors I wanted to keep consistent with her wood carvings to keep cohesion between the art and the type. The very restraining medium of wood also inspired the rectangles and lines around the type. She found that wood carvings were most effective in communicating the suffering she wanted the audience to feel. All the lines in her prints are very rigid, and I wanted to keep to that structure.
The Human Epoch: Living in the Anthropocene was an online exhibition I created. This exhibition was designed for an introductory environmental literacy, and science course offered at UConn. The work is oriented around the concept that human beings are now the dominant geological agent. In the 1950s, the “Great Acceleration” occurred with improving science, technology, energy use, the human population, urbanization, and species extinctions. This time is debated as the beginning of the Anthropocene era because of its significant changes in geological strata and climate change.
Based on the “Great Acceleration” that the human race was going through, I oriented the art pieces with a timeline so the reader could clearly tell the sequence of events. I also broke down the paintings into their respective eras throughout this time period so the information is easier to digest.
