Melanie and Kelsey on the inter actives

Blue Cadet

Yesterday our student group, the Society for Environmental Graphic Design (SEGD), visited Bluecadet, a media design firm in Philadelphia. Housed in a beautiful exposed-brick, wooden-floor, pet-friendly office, the energetic 20 & 30-somethings who run the company ran through their history, inspiration, design process, and current projects. One of the best designed interactive sites I stumbled upon this past year while researching material on Diego Rivera when I was TA-ing Art History was done by them, I found out five minutes into the presentation causing me to admire them that much more. In addition, it was cool to see them prototyping on ideum monitors after I just discovered them a week prior researching interactive equipment for my thesis.

All that, just to say, I’m writing this to serve as a reminder that I should research reviews on exhibitions they have been involved with. It would be interesting to see, given the success of their business, and the creativity of their products, the amount of attention the critics give to interactive media in exhibitions versus the overall experience and objects/story. While all of those items are integrated in a well-designed exhibit, I imagine the perspective and level of detail on such elements varies greatly from source to source.

To be continued….