Submerge: A Museum Graphic Design Project
Here is the Museum logo, color palette, and Typography. I wanted the exhibit to be a mix of fun cartoons with realistic elements, so the submarine logo is based on a real submarine but vectorized with fun colors. I added a rust texture and shadows in Photoshop to make give it a slightly more realistic look. I chose the blues in the color palette to represent the ocean and underwater theme but added the yellow to liven up the palette so that it was fun, rather than melancholy.
Sketches and Preliminary Work
Here are my preliminary sketches and one of my draft logos.
Here are the flat images of everything imported into Photoshop for the interior designs.
Interiors
This is one of the interiors of the exhibit. I wanted to make a timeline more fun, so I incorporated a friendly squid to guide guests through the evolution of the submarine. The interior room, timeline, and turtle cartoon were created in illustrator and imported individually into Photoshop so that I could adjust perspectives, textures, and shadows to make it look like an actual room. I used a photograph of natural water and bubbles to contrast the cartoons on the walls.
One problem I ran into was that there were no royalty-free images of the submarines I needed, even in the national archives. To solve this problem, I illustrated each sub myself and made them into kid's cartoons while still keeping with the realistic aspects of each one. When it came to the physical Turtle exhibit, I used Procreate and painted it as realistically as I could.
This is my second interior. I wanted this exhibit to be a corner exhibit because a corner makes it easy to read from one wall to the next, and both walls have to do with life on a sub. I chose the Bubble style layout on the left wall to give it interest and add to the underwater theme. I put a picture of deep water on the right wall to contrast the cartoons with the natural world and give it a darker background for the bedtime theme while remaining upbeat.
The problem I ran into while creating this wall was similar to the last- I couldn't find any royalty-free images of submarine bunks to create a display. To solve this problem, I made a vectorized image of the bunks and made it part of the wall design instead. This ended up working better because it looks more cohesive and doesn't block any part of the other wall.
Exterior
This is an exterior design done as an advertisement for the exhibit. It spans across an entire wall and gives those walking by a fun underwater experience. This was created by taking a stock image, editing it until it was right for my graphics, then adding my vector images on top and tweaking it until it looked natural.
Handout
This is a brochure that can be picked up as you enter the museum. It has a slightly different shape than a regular rectangular brochure to make it more fun for kids. Each brochure has a pocket with a different card that gives information about a submarine and the time period it's in so that the kids can play pretend and learn about subs.
