Time for the second installment of the 2022 annual highlights from our #InterpDesign twitter platform. If you follow us already then this will be a refresher/reminder with some added bonus expansion on the original limited commentary. If you don’t follow us yet (what are you waiting for!) then this will be a tremendous treasure trove of titillating twitterings. Totally! We aim to inspire by exposing you to an eclectic range of source material that is thought provoking and will contribute to visitor experience enhancement.
Playful Interpretation
Among all the tweets, deciding what to start with was a challenge. It was decided by an avian visitor. Outside my window, on a snow laden branch, looking quite plump and happy in the minus 22C temperature was a robin. He seemed to be egging me on saying, “Just put on your down jacket, lined pants and join me -it’s balmy out here. The chokecherry berries have just the right bite of ice fermented tang to them.” Normally, the robin performs an uplifting sign of warmth and of new life’s explosion soon to come – both welcoming signs after a long, cold season, however this chap was heralding the opposite.
With this human to wildlife projection prelude, Rosemary Mosco’s spring robin comic strip came to mind.
Her great nature- based comical images illustrate what playful interpretation can mean. We periodically retweet her graphic strips on our tweet platform. Interpretive excellence is about viewing behaviour, creating images and stating language in relatable terms – why not in cartoon terms?
The Power of Cartoons
As you can see, Rosemary has a light- hearted, quirky way of communicating. The following snippet from her Bird and Moon comics, exemplifies a different form of informative “teaching”:
Human: "I would do anything for my kids! I'd protect them with my life!"
Canada Goose: "I would do anything for my kids! I'd protect them with my life!"
Human (while strolling through the middle of a goose family on a park lawn): "Why is that goose being such an aggro jerk.”
This made me think that a graphic approach may be a better tool to use when it comes to raising awareness of inappropriate and dangerous human behaviour. I would wager that in many cases, this slant of humour, using anthropomorphism based on biological behaviour would be a far more effective warning for certain audiences in order to communicate why to avoid human wildlife interactions.
We might try using this graphic approach more often as a way of delivering our messages and accomplishing our head and heart outcomes. Rosemary Mosco’s work demonstrates another way of building a connection with nature through better empathy, understanding, and a more inclusive planetary ego.
Canvases Worth Pursuing & Igniting
Graphics like innovative street art design often provokes my little brain cells to utter comments of… why don’t our parks and heritage sites spend time ensuring that their service infrastructure performs to its best ability and play a role in non-personal interpretation?
Upon seeing this stairway adorned with fish it spawned all sorts of ideas. An interpretive adornment does not have to be onsite. Maybe search for a local venue in your neighbouring community and investigate a partnership as a part of outreach work that performs 24/7 and has constant reinforcement.
For example, what if a village situated near a river adorned a staircase with native fish to remind residents about caring for their watershed & thinking twice about what they flush from their home into other beings' homes. A wonderful message so germane to many natural area visitor centres and definitely worth hinting at to their visitors. What about your staircase? What would work for your site? What image would be worth replicating in a prominent spot that would remind visitors about developing a more caring relationship with whatever subject matter was chosen to support your mission and outcomes?
Double Duty Infrastructure
Resources for interpretive programming, self-guided trails and specific media are constantly being squeezed yet visitor service Infrastructure is a given. It not only has the capacity to be doing double duty, it NEEDS to be doing double duty both from a functional viewpoint and from a mission -related, message-reinforcing viewpoint (see our previous mini-blog post Double Duty Design Dream Dec 2018).
There are so many public canvases capable of sparking the flame of inspiration. A staircase is just one “avenue” of possibility. Another would be a sidewalk doing double duty as a giant “What am I ?” artifact display - conversation piece, acting as multiple mini-gateways to past worlds.
Do your walkways liven up the visitor experience? Do they play a role in drawing you in and engaging your senses?
Sit Up and Listen
On the subject of Infrastructure there was a great tweet from Copenhagen, Denmark which aimed to draw attention to climate change. This was not just an attempt at a fun selfie, like the giant Adirondack chairs at tourist resorts but it also acted as a message carrier.
Thought-provoking clever design, in this case a bench built a metre higher than the normal sidewalk rest bench, was situated at a practical height due to the projected raise in sea level by the year 2100. By avoiding facts and figures, infrastructure can play a very significant and impactful role bringing the abstract into the concrete. This is a powerful illustration of how ignoring a behaviour can have dramatic outcomes.
Created as part of TV 2’s “Our Earth – our Responsibility” campaign, it certainly strikes a chord with pedestrians. Any working on a non-exhibit like this to drive home the point of Our Earth- Our Responsibility? Any partners you could approach?
Emphasis on Fun
Sometimes EID finds street art design examples worth sharing that combine subtle humour with an image that could have relevance to an heritage institution. The example chosen below blends this relevance with a humourous infrastructure example that gets infrastructure to pull its interpretive weight. Our sites need to look for opportunities to add a little fun to help put a smile on the visitor’s face.
Not only the pipe but also the grate was screaming for some creative treatment and the artist combined both. This cartoony image would work well for a zoo in keeping with the nature of the site but there are numerous images and styles adaptable to fit whatever your subject matter is whether botanical garden, aquarium, historic site, or nature centre. We all possess these, shall I say ugly corners, that are underperforming. Let’s pay more attention to what we already have and get them working for us. Get out there and inventory those areas that need a makeover. In this case we asked on our tweet: Do you have a pipe you want to spruce up for your visitor’s experience?
Satisfy the Playful Urge
Sometimes there can be the image-based tweets that trigger a deeper dive. In the case of the dog library, it sparked more than just light-hearted, canine compassionate humour. “Take a stick leave a stick” is a play on words for the concept of a free neighbourhood lawn mini-library where cupboards on posts beside sidewalks cajole strollers to open them and “Take a book leave a book.”
Pets are frequent companions with visitors to our sites and courtesies are often offered to them in the form of water bowls, treats and shady spots to rest providing the basic of Maslow’s needs. Play for a dog takes it up a level as reading does for humans. Do we need to satisfy the playful urge in humans before we jump into interpretive messaging or can we combine them?
This also got me thinking down another pathway – be on your guard. This outpouring of care and compassion for our pets says something about our need for companionship and relationship. We seem to understand that all living creatures require the same basic needs. We go the extra mile when it comes to providing the life needs of feeding wild birds and animals along with offering them some nesting shelter assistance. Are we compensating for feeling guilty because we have wiped out their home habitat? Is this not another form of creating a dependency on us rather than designing and “developing” human communities where we strive to live harmoniously and interdependently together with wildlife? Our natural heritage sites can do a better job of demonstrating this lopsided lifestyle, and question the kind of relationship being set up. Our urban parks can raise the awareness bar among visitors so they advocate for city, building and landscape planning that reflects more than human needs. Designing with nature in mind has to be the way going forward.
Play is Serious Learning
Getting back to the concept of play, is this particularly apt quote that popped up on Twitter that EID subsequently shared. Fred Rogers of Mister Rogers Neighbourhood TV series understood children and we SHOULD remember his point that play is the work of childhood and involves serious learning. Although I might venture to say that play applies to all human ages. Playful interpretation is what we at EID always advocate for.