Problem: A children's museum exhibit has thirty seconds to earn a visitor's attention before they move on. The spatial environment has to work as hard as the content inside it, inviting curiosity, guiding movement naturally, and creating the kind of immersive play that makes a child want to stay, explore, and come back.

Process: Exhibit design at GCM is a genuinely collaborative endeavor. It begins in design charrettes that bring together consultants, exhibit manufacturers, education teams, and senior stakeholders to align on the concept, learning objectives, and spatial vision. From there, I translate those conversations into creative direction: concept boards, aesthetic frameworks, and the full suite of supporting graphics, including logos, environmental graphics, wayfinding, and didactic elements. I stay involved through fabrication and help project manage the installation, overseeing graphics execution through to ribbon cutting.

Outcome: Exhibits that earn their space, tenfold. New exhibits like Forts and MakeSpace recorded average dwell times of 20 and 45 minutes, a 140% increase over the museum's original exhibits, meaning visitors weren't just passing through. The Big John Graphics Suite was recognized with a Platinum Hermes Creative Award, and the approach developed across these installations has become the standard for how GCM creates immersive exhibit experiences.