Srin and Iona presented the Tunnel concept. Janneke was enthusiastic about the critical thought behind the design. Especially the thoughts behind immersing visitors in the posters. She liked how the design could be easily changed depending on the exhibition. Janneke was a bit skeptical about the price of the design, but she did say that if she had the money it would be a great option. She also said that she could imagine the design in one of the large London museums such as the V&A.

Ziwen presented the Light Box concept. Janneke loved the key themes of the design and thought the design detailing was thorough and helpful for understanding the feasibility of the project. She especially enjoyed the concept of having the posters displayed on different planes and different heights, in order to engage visitors in a varied manor. She thought the idea of having the posters in glass cases was good because it would simultaneously keep them secure and allow visitors to get up close to the posters.

Will presented the Fold-able Frame concept. This seemed to be the design that Janneke preferred. She went as far as to say that the design should be patented as she could realistically see it being used for poster displays. She liked the flexibility and minimal aspect of the design but also really felt assured that the posters would be secure. She liked how the project was scale-able and could be arranged as to guide visitors through the exhibition. Overall this design was a success.

Today is the final day so we spent the morning presenting our final design packages to our Collaborator, Janneke, from the Special Collections museum. Like the last Friday, we met with groups I, K and E to present our work together. It was great to see how much was achieved over the fortnight, by all of the groups. Overall, Janneke was really excited with all of the proposals we presented. On regular occasions she said that the output was of a professional standard and that she would love to have everything built.

Today we focused on refining the three concepts and we made decisions about the materials and details that we will present to the special collections. The three groups are in constant communication to make sure we have 3 distinguishable ideas, but that all the ideas tackle the design challenges set to us by our special collections collaborators. Ziwen's seminar about museum grade materials really helped with making decisions because some of our ideas were instantly ruled out. Tomorrow we will work on making the final presentation and drawing package to present to Janneke on Friday.

Another group has developed a framing system which would create a flexible and salable system for the special collections curators to use. The nodes would be 3D printed and the poles would be made out of solid timber. These minimal materials have been chose because they're robust and have a soft visual impact compared to the graphics of the posters. The next thing for this team to develop is how the posters are going to be mounted on to the frame as to be able to display different size posters at different times. But that is for tomorrow....

One of our three groups is working on a box module concept. The idea is strong in tackling the issue of storage and preservation of the posters. The design is also interesting because it creates views and angles at which visitors can see the posters. The team is detailing how the posters will be taken in and out, which will be done with a series of draws which visitors can interact with to view the posters.

Due to the problems that arose on monday, Ziwen provided an in depth seminar on museum grade materials and how to construct with museum grade standards. The seminar covered air circulation/sealing, UV protection materials and security techniques. These are the features that we need to include in our designs so it was great to get some insight into the industry standards. One of our biggest issues is going to be keeping the posters rigid and in air tight enclosures.

Day 7 is over! Today we learned about the adobe design package. Which was really helpful for the afternoon when continued developing our designs. A few problems with our designs have arisen today which we're going to try and solve together tomorrow!

We're refining our designs down to detail considerations. Last Friday Janneke and Stephanie said that we needed to pay special attention to how the posters were encased, and how accessible they were when they needed to be changed. We want to propose feasible proposals to the special collections so we're really trying to focus on the detail. We've realised that changing the posters might be a bit of a problem so tomorrow we're going to work together to propose a few different methods.

We split into our three groups and resumed our design development. We are all now working on finalizing our designs and delegating the final drawings for each design. Each person in each group will focus on a specific element of the design. For example: one person on concept, one person on user experience, one person on detailed design.

Connor started the day by giving a seminar to a packed crowd. The focus was to how to us efficient workflows between photoshop, indesign and illustrator. We Also went through the basic principles of each software and handy tips and tools to use. We then had a long Q&A session which was helpful for sharing each others knowledge about the softwares.

Week one is over! This week we got to grips with the brief, the poster collection and theoretically understanding how to design an engaging exhibition. We started sketching some rough concepts which we are going to develop further next week.

Following the group presentation, Will then gave a thorough seminar on AutoCad. Next week we're going to need to draw details and therefore learning AutoCad now will give us an advantage. Will went through setting up a standard file template that works in various situations, as a part of this he shared a template with line weights and colours already set. He then explained effectively workflows and helpful tools for drawing efficiently. He then went in to how to scale the drawings and print from paper space. Mike and Will then went through a few of their Autocad files they had worked on before to show people how a fully drawn CAD file can look when organised properly. Afterwards we went through an example of a drawing package so that everyone knows what we're going to have to produce for the end of next week.

After lunch we all had a conversation summarising the key points we each took from the morning presentation. We decided that it was worthwhile developing parallel projects for the final package, rather than only focusing on one design. We talked about the positives and negatives of each design, and how each one should be developed when we get back to it each week.

Today, along with groups I, K and E, we met with our collaborators Janneke and Stephanie to present our progress so far. Each of the events groups had approached their respective projects In a similar way, splitting the large group into smaller sub-groups to develop parallel concepts. Janneke and Stephanie gave us really encouraging feedback. They said that our critical research of exhibition design was really thorough and well thought through. They were skeptical about a few of our concepts and thought we needed to connect our theoretical research more accurately to the designs. They also said that in terms of feasibility we should show our final proposals at varying scales, which we thought would be a really interesting design driver. We agreed that all four groups would reconvene to present our final drawing packages at the end of the events fortnight!

A half day for Day 3! Today we visited the People's History Museum. Whilst learning about the history of democracy in Britain we also learnt a lot about exhibition display design.

We studied how information should be layered in order to create hierarchy for the user to engage with. This is done by using different sized font and by the position in which the posters/banners are displayed. We also saw how important it is to keep the artifacts in museum grade conditions. Sometimes, in the case of paper posters, this meant enclosing the piece in an air tight frame. In other cases, like for banners, it meant constantly controlling the conditions of the room and keeping a distance between the public and the banner. In some cases it was a bit of a shame that you couldn't get closer to the banners because their amazing textures and craftsmanship.

One of the most interesting features of the museum was the interactive elements. There were varying features which tried to engage the curiosity and participation of the audience. The feature in the image asked people to send in photographs of themselves protesting. The museum then frames the images to show the similarities and differences between forms of protest. This type of interactivity is effective because it makes the audience feel like they are a part of the theme, democracy. Viewers see how important democracy is and can then become a part of the exhibition, thus showing their support for an evolving democracy. This feature also contributes to the strong connection between the exhibition and it's contemporary context.

We decided that we should think of an innovative method of user engagement in our proposal for the Special Collections.

Whilst looking around the People's History Museum we learnt a lot about exhibiting posters and other two dimensional objects. One of the key ideas was the creating a clear hierarchy of information. The Peterloo massacre display used different fonts to show varying amounts of information. Key words were hung on banners which depicted the themes of the topic. The displays were hung both on the walls an in the space, this created varying distances from which the posters were viewed. Sometimes it was difficult to tell which bit of information was about each banner. Having a large map of the Manchester placed the exhibition within the wider city, creating a relationship between the museum and it's context.

How and where the posters are mounted, and the varying fonts that we use, are going to be really important in our designs.

Today we visited the People's History Museum, the national museum of democracy. The museum tracks the starting routes of democracy in Britain and follows it's progression through a series of momentous occasions. The main exhibition was displayed chronologically but each era was split into four specific themes: revolution, reformers, workers, voters. The topics reflected the content of the era. There was an additional exhibition called Disrupt? Peterloo and Protest, which commemorates 200 years since the Peterloo massacre in Manchester.

We decided to visit the People's History Museum because of their extensive collection of posters and banners. The pieces also vary in scale and fragility, much like the Special Collections poster collection.

And that's day 2! Today was focused on detailed site surveying and analysis. We learnt how to accurately measure a space without drawings. Then we learnt some SketchUp skills which we used to model the Special Collections museum space.

After lunch Mike gave a SketchUp seminar. He started off going through the basic principles and then a few of the tools and layout setups. We then went on to set up some helpful shortcuts. He also gave us some advice on setting up views for perspectives, and how to export files from SketchUp for use in other programs.

After the tutorial everyone started modelling up the space that we surveyed in the morning. Some people focused on detailing specific details of the room so that we could get a better overall picture of the space. We need the models to be accurate so that we propose realistic sketches of our proposals to Janneke

We spent a couple of hours surveying the existing Special Collections space. Each of us started by sketching out a rough plan of the rooms. Then between us we calculated the overall measurements of the space and then different groups focused on accurately measuring specific details.

The aim for the survey was so that we can all digitally model the space in 3D later.

Ziwen started Tuesday off with a presentation on site surveying. We went through the purpose of accurately surveying a site/room. He then covered the tools which are commonly used for measuring and recording, for example tape measures and laser measures. He then went through using photography to document relative scales and calculating measurements at varying scales to create comparisons for accuracy.

That's the end of day 1! Today we got to know each other and our special collections collaborators. We also started to research a few early ideas of how to proceed with the project.

In the afternoon Derek ran an interesting seminar on exhibition design. He started by presenting some of the key considerations that need to be made when approaching an existing space and how to make that space appropriate for different types of exhibition.

He then led an exercise where everyone split into pairs and found precedents of exhibitions which they found interesting. Which we subsequently presented back to the whole group.

The recurring themes were: creating varied, layered experiences that are interactive at different scales and creating an intervention which is easily adaptable and changeable for the museum curators.

We then went over to the Special Collections where Stephanie had kindly prepared a select few of the posters to look at. The posters ranged from the 1870's to the present day and hugely varied in content, style and scale.

The session was important because it brought up many obstacles which we may not have foreseen without seeing the real posters. For example, the fragility of the older posters and the huge scale of the newer ones.

We saw only only a select few of the c.3000 posters, we're yet to decide how many at a time it is appropriate to display at one time.

We started the day with a great presentation from Janneke, our collaborator from the Special Collections Museum. She explained: the role of the museum within the university, the history of the collections, what collections they had and the future plans for the collections. She then presented what she would like to see from the projects during the events period. The presentation was shared with groups I, K and E as we are all working for the Special Collections. It was great to see what they'll be getting up to and we'll see them all again later in the week to compare progress!

Day 1 - 25.03

First we will meet in Lecture Theatre Hall 4, Brooks Building for a presentation by our collaborator.

Then we will head to Chatham 610, our base for the day, and spend an hour introducing ourselves.

After Lunch (13-14) Derek will provide a seminar on Exhibition Design.

The aim for the day is to become acquainted with each other and the project. It is also to have a basic understanding of exhibition design and the specific requirements of the Special Collections.

Event Schedule

Throughout the fortnight we will be working towards designing three different proposals for the poster display case. We will consistently work towards the final output, a comprehensive drawing package. Times of group study and design development will be supplemented with visits and seminars, delivered by the event coordinators.

We really want the two weeks to be relaxed, creative and productive!

We're team V and we're the master's students who will be coordinating the Poster Re-poster events group. Nice to meet you!

As a team we will be designing a museum grade display case for a selection of the c.8000 piece international poster collection held by the Special Collections Museum in the MMU Library. The collection doesn’t have an existing display unit and is therefore invisible to the public for most of the time, we would like to change that!

Our final output will be a detailed drawing package of our proposal, which we will submit to the special collections team at the end of the event. The drawing package will include: GA plans of the spaces the case could occupy, detailed drawings of our proposal and visualisations and diagrams of how users will interact with the collection.

We will be simultaneously developing both our creative and detail design skills by efficiently following the design process from problem to concept to solution. In order to develop these skills, there will be appropriate seminars led by the master's students which will go alongside the project development.