Designing signage for The National Great Blacks in Wax Museum ~ DesignFest 2023
On March 25th, I completed my 4th year as a Design Coach at MICA’s annual DesignFest sponsored by the T. Rowe Price Foundation. DesignFest is a once-a-year opportunity for local organizations to collaborate with talented student and professional designers to come up with creative solutions for the design challenges your organization is facing.
During DesignFest, designers from all over come together for an opportunity to craft solutions for nonprofits in need of design support. As a Design Coach, I am a mentor, advisor, and guide for the designers on my team. I help the designers set and achieve the design goals and help us stay on track during the event. During this year’s DesignFest, we partnered with the National Great Blacks in Wax Museum.
What is a design sprint?
Design sprints are usually an intense 5-day process where user-centered teams tackle design problems. DesignFest is a one-day design sprint event to help small Baltimore nonprofits better communicate their identity, mission, and impact through stronger visual design – at no cost to the organization. A design sprint is a process for solving challenges through designing, prototyping, and testing ideas with real users and in this case, showcasing our design solutions with the partnered nonprofits.
Design sprints prioritize the end-user and allow for diverse input, valuing the opinions of everyone present on the design team. Design sprints also allow the best ideas to shine while lowering risks. They save time, create a clear roadmap for design solutions, and allow solutions to be tested before launch. Many nonprofits have little to no dedicated creative team members. so It’s amazing what a group of skilled designers can do in a short time period. During Designfest, we complete the design sprint process in 1-day.
What are the design sprint steps?
Understand - Map out the problem and define the area of focus.
Ideate - What are possible solutions?
Decide - Which solution will we test?
Prototype - Design and build a realistic solution.
Test - Get feedback from real users.
Designfest 2023
Nonprofit Assignment:
The National Great Blacks in Wax Museum
North Star Challenge: Design way-finding signage for press release events and the museum’s relocation.
Team:
Monique Jenkins
Drew Bonsu
Danielle Moore
Gabriel David Carter
Understand
The National Great Blacks in Wax Museum's story spans the collective experience of over 5,000 years. Since its opening, the museum has become a prominent, nationally recognized institution. It has also evolved into a powerful compendium of wax figures. The museum houses approximately 150 figures of people from the past, like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks, and from the present, like President Barack Obama.
The National Great Blacks in Wax Museum attracts about 80,000 visitors per year. The museum’s visitorship currently consists of a Monday through Friday audience of students, a weekend audience of out-of-town adults, and a summer audience of children from camps, recreation centers, and other organized groups. The team spent an hour getting to know the problems the museum was facing. The museum required signage as they are transitioning to a larger space and would use the signage for press events. Through the discovery conversation with the nonprofit project leads, we chose a central theme for the signage: “Black history is present.”
This theme encompassed black history, education, and community. The word “present ” highlights time (past, present, and future), the presence of prominent black historical figures (present and accounted for, similar to a schoolhouse roll call), and physical geography (present location). We aimed to design 3-6 pieces of signage to be used in and around the museum’s location using the theme “Black history is present.” We spent the next few hours designing possible solutions for what the signage could look like. After lunch, we refined our design direction and prepared high-quality designs and mock-ups to present to our nonprofit.
Ideate
Decide
Prototype
Test
We presented our designs and received positive feedback from our nonprofit project leads. We envisioned this design solution implemented around Baltimore or even Washington, DC! As always, DesignFest provided an opptunity to connect with local designers, put my design and leaderships skills to the test, and provided design support to a local organization in need. I am looking forward to DesignFest 2024!