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Designing for Emotion
 Futurama, World’s Fair, New York City, 1939 ‘You do not go to museums to look at things; you go to be enveloped by a mood, an ambience, a scene’ Jed Perl One of the most difficult aspects of designing, whether for museums or otherwise, is accounting for the emotional response of the audience. A lovely post titled ‘Grandma’s Yellow Kitchen’ at IdeasOnIdeas shows just how varied responses to a design can be – in this case a client’s negative reaction to the colour yellow based on her memories of the old–fashioned yellow kitchen belonging to her grandma. As Jed Perl’s quote suggests, the importance of how a museum connects to an audience on an emotional level should not be underestimated. In recent years, in the design-world, ‘emotion’ has been something of a buzzword. Authors such as Donald Norman  and Virginia Postrel argue that the pleasure people get from a design is equally important as functionality – in the more traditional sense of the word. Looking back at the history of exhibition design there are many examples of designers who have used their capacity to harness emotions to connect to the audience. One of my favourite examples is Norman Bel Geddes and his exhibition ‘ Futurama ’ for General Motors at the World’s Fair, New York City, 1939. Bel Geddes took the audience on a journey into the future – a vision of a 1960s city – using theatrical techniques, spectacular lighting and a soundtrack. Focusing attention by engrossing the audience in the experience, Bel Geddes was able to achieve the effect of immersing the audience in a utopian and optimistic vision of the future. In contemporary museum environments, immersive exhibitions are a popular means of engaging the audience’s emotions. Ralph Appelbaum Associate’s exhibits are famous for enabling visitors to take on a role, for example that of ‘victims’ at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C. Immersive display methods can be powerful in creating an emotional response. However, they can also be potentially limiting if the intention is to provoke a more individual response to the information presented. The important thing to remember is that everything in a display, whether it be the colour yellow, or a mannequin with blue eye-shadow communicate at an emotional level. And that these reactions help build the museum experience. If there are any museum experiences of your own that provoked strong emotions, MODE would love to hear about them. |
Posted by Lisa at 1:26 PM
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