Skills
Exhibit Design
Environmental Graphics
Illustration
Fabrication
Spatial Design
Client Presentation
Collaborative Design
Software/Hardware
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Photoshop
Unity
CNC
Laser Cutter
Woodshop
Plotter
Deliverables
Full-Scale Prototype Illustrated Character Set Educational Signage Flora & Fauna Graphics CNC-Cut Elements
Vinyl Paw Print Decals
Completed
May 2018
Working with the Explore More Discovery Museum in Harrisonburg, VA, my teammate and I designed an immersive Appalachian Trail experience for the museum's two-story stairwell. The core challenge wasn't simply teaching children about nature — it was finding a way to make them want to engage with it. Drawing on research with children and our own childhood senses of wonder, we built the exhibit around cultivating curiosity: a world where the familiar becomes magical, where things invite you to look closer, and where discovery feels like finding something secret. The result is a layered environment of illustrated characters, interactive elements, and scaled environmental graphics designed to spark imagination as much as education.
Objective
Our objective was to design an interactive, educational exhibit for a specific space within Explore More Discovery Museum in Harrisonburg, VA — a two-story stairwell connecting the museum's floors. The exhibit needed to engage young visitors, align with the museum's educational mission, and work within the constraints and preferences of the museum's staff and stakeholders.
Site Specifics
Concepting
We were asked to present two distinct concepts for stakeholder review — each a fully developed direction for how the stairwell could be transformed.
Ideation
Our research focused on environments that evoke wonder — spaces where scale, light, and natural forms create a sense of discovery. We tested early concepts with children to understand what would genuinely spark their curiosity and make them want to explore.
The stairwell featured a unique second handrail at child height for safety. We designed a graphic to run between the two rails, transforming the climb into a journey along the Appalachian Trail — from Georgia at the bottom to Maine at the top.
An early rough model exploring our main concepts and ideas. We were uniquely positioned to ideate in volume in the conceptual space, as the constraints of our physical environment — vertical circulation, dual handrails, multiple landings — actually expanded our freedom to explore rather than limiting it.
Fabrication
The uniquely experimental and concept forward approach we found for this project allowed for the making process itself to become more than a straightforward journey of execution. Rather, it was a playful, experimental, and iterative process unto itself.
Studio Prototype & Presentation
We built a full-scale prototype spanning the studio space — a complete looks-like/works-like installation that brought together layered dimensional elements, fabric waterfalls, illustrated characters, educational graphics, and interactive components into a cohesive spatial experience. This was exhibit design at actual scale: testing materials, demonstrating how visitors would move through the space, and proving the concept could work.
Site Specific Final Presentation
We presented our completed prototype installation to museum staff and Appalachian Trail representatives — a major milestone that brought our design vision into physical reality at full scale. The stakeholders responded enthusiastically to the playful approach to nature education and the effective transformation of the vertical space. This presentation marked the handoff of our design concept to the museum team, who would execute the final installation based on their budget and fabrication resources.
Museum's Final Installation
The museum translated our design concept into a painted mural, adapting the vision to fit their budget and installation capabilities. While most of the dimensional and interactive elements were simplified into the painted format, they retained many elements and concepts from our original design, and even kept the the vinyl pawprint trail we installed. The resulting mural is beautiful and successfully captures the immersive forest atmosphere we envisioned — demonstrating how a strong concept can translate across different execution methods.
