Background

For this project, I was tasked with cataloging one of the Smithsonian Museum's exhibits, creating a catalog, a donor card, and a third piece in order to drive in interest for the exhibit.

The first step of this catalog project was to do research into the different exhibits in order to choose one that I felt was moving. One of the things I find super interesting is history, more specifically protests, which made this a match made in heaven for me.

This exhibit was a collection of several pieces of protest art for the Vietnam War created by several artists, including photography works, sculptures, paintings, and more.

Process

Step 1 was to gather the different images of the exhibit and categorize them based on artistic medium, in order to sort out the ideas and eventual chapters of the catalog.

After I came up with the categories for the catalog, my next step was to do research into textbook layouts and catalog layouts to find something that was fiting for the serious topics discussed. I ended up with a minimal and modern layout that utilized white space to create an extra emphasis on the artworks themselves, aiming to not distract the reader with too much text.

The donor card was simple, being made to match the style of the catalog. It used the same color scheme, and kept the serious tone. For my third part of this project, I decided on a collage/poster that showcases some of the themes of these protest pieces, aiming to be a powerful look into the exhibit as a whole.

What I learned

Despite the serious nature of the piece, I had a lot of fun with this project, learning what goes into cataloging an exhibit and figuring out how to present a set of pieces cohesively, despite the drastically different natures of some of the works.