Poster House (NY) is the first museum in the United States dedicated exclusively to posters, presenting a global view of posters from their earliest appearance in the late 1800s, to their present-day use.
We were tasked to create four interactive exhibits as permanent fixtures of the museum (3 digital + 1 children area) that are seamlessly integrated into the newly built architecture.
The “poster” medium started as oversized ink-on-paper communication tool. Today, it takes many other forms — digital, animated, interactive, and generative. We made sure that all interactive components we’ve produced offer a good mix of tactile, physical, and a screen-based experiences.
PHOTO BOOTH
A green screen photo booth that is visible from the street and embedded into an alcove at the museum’s entrance. Visitors can place themselves in iconic posters using the custom interface we designed, and receive the final posters via email, text message, and printed.
Since the museum’s opening 5 months ago, over 6,500 images have been texted, emailed, and printed through the highly visible photo booth.
The photo booth continues to be a big draw for passersby with an average of 15 minutes visitors engagement.
DIGITAL POSTER WALL
An oversized 4K screen displaying larger-than-life posters. The “billboard” showcases a grid of curated posters from the collection that randomly gets enlarged periodically, or when a visitor pressed a nearby button. Located adjacent to the ticketing counter, this digital poster wall provides a good preview of what to expect in the museum.
CHILDREN’S AREA
Blast from the past featuring New York City scenes from the 1960s. A coloring mural wall with magnetic posters, interactive vintage pay phones by a newsstand, and layering stations that explain how posters are made by overprinting cyan, magenta, yellow, and black inks. This colorful section of the museum attracts audience of all ages.
POSTER MACHINE
Table-top interactive kiosks through which visitors can learn and experience the poster creation process. We deconstructed what goes through in a designer’s brain and created a choose-your-own-adventure poster design game. Each step explains the significance and thought process of the basic ingredients required to make a poster—symbols, colors, phrases, fonts, and design styles. There are three themes: Propaganda, Film, or Advertising, for which we created over 143,000 images that represent every possible path one can take!
Good design is often assumed to be naturally occurring by non-practitioners; most people only notice bad design, if they notice design at all.
Valerie Crosswhite (President) explained the thought process behind the machine: “We wanted to create a game that would engage people about design history, specifically through the lens of poster design. Good design is often assumed to be naturally occurring by non-practitioners; most people only notice bad design, if they notice design at all. The Poster Machine will hopefully give a glimpse into the creative process of poster design and encourage people to think about it differently.”
Awarded GDUSA 2019 American Graphic Design
LEADERSHIP
Robert de Saint Phalle, Lead Exhibition Designer & Project Manager
John Kudos, Lead Graphic & Experience Designer
Masashi Kawamura, Lead Creative Technology
DESIGN
John D’Aponte, Exhibition Designer
Linsey Wood, Exhibition Architect
Ashley Wu, Graphic Designer
Sumit Paul, Interaction Designer
Andy Kurniawan, Production Graphic Designer
Giovanni Adrian, Production Graphic Designer
Darius Wang, Motion Designer
Kelly Burns, Motion Designer
TECHNOLOGY
Qanta Shimizu, Technical Director
Deborah Ten, Project Manager
Shuichi Tsutsumi, Poster Machine Programmer
Yuma Murakami, Poster Wall Backend Engineer
Yingjie Bei, Poster Wall Electronics Engineer
COLLABORATORS
kubik/maltbie, Exhibition Fabricator
LA Photo Party, Photo Booth Manufacturer
PHOTOGRAPHY
Sam Morgan Photography
