In November, West Michigan Graphic Design Archives hosted an event, Explore and Celebrate the Power of Design, at the Grand Rapids Children’s Museum. It was inspired by the Weathering Emotions exhibit, which aims to help children understand and express emotions. The exhibit resulted from collaboration among CARNEVALE, the Grand Rapids Children’s Museum, and the nonprofit i understand, which honors the memory of Kimberly Mutch Bergner. 

Members of the panel were Vonnie Woodrick, founder of i understand; Mike Carnevale, founder of the Grand Rapids-based agency CARNVALE; Caitlyn Haisel, design director at CARNEVALE; Erin Crison, COO and CFO of the Children’s Museum, and Joe VanSpronsen, project manager at Meta4Mat, fabricators of the exhibit. Lois Maassen, president of the West Michigan Graphic Design Archives board, moderated the discussion. You can listen along with the audio excerpts below, or read the entire transcript.

After opening with introductions, the discussion answered questions like:

• How did the process for creating the exhibit begin? (audio 4 minutes)
• How did collaboration work well? Where were there bumps? How did you hold each other accountable to keep children in mind? (audio 4:20 minutes)
• What did the iterative process look like? How did you know when you’d arrived at the final concept? (audio 4:08 minutes)
• Were there memorable pleasant surprises—or dead ends—during the development process? (audio 8:20 minutes)
• How did you mix creating brand-new tech with familiar tools used in unexpected ways? (audio 3:20 minutes)
• Were accessibility features part of the initial project criteria? How did you carry those criteria through the design process? What resources did you rely on? (audio 4:25 minutes)
• How did the cloud-people characters originate? Part of the concept from the start? Or did they emerge during the design process? (audio 1:24 minutes)
• What’s the future for this exhibit? (audio 1:51 minutes)
• Do those on the design team continue to have new thoughts and ideas? Does this project stay with you? (audio 1:35 minutes)
• What have each of you or all of you collectively seen as the kid response to the exhibit? How are you assessing the response? What makes you happy, and satisfied, and grateful? (audio 5:07 minutes)

Before and after the panel discussions, attendees were able to tour the exhibit with and ask questions of members of the design team. Especially for students, a preview presentation included prototypes and first-hand experiences from designers and fabricators; students from design programs at Calvin University, Ferris State University, Grand Valley University, Hope College, and Michigan State University attended. 

This event was made possible because of generous sponsors: Haworth Helps, CARNEVALE, MillerKnoll Foundation, and Meta4Mat.