NYPL Treasures Case Study

Designing crowd-driven exhibition graphics that exhibit the perspectives of the exhibition's visitors, while retaining partial input from the exhibition.

THE EXHIBITION

For more than 125 years, The New York Public Library has collected, preserved, and made accessible the world’s knowledge.

Now, for the first time, the Polonsky Exhibition of The New York Public Library’s Treasures showcases some of the most extraordinary items from the 56 million in our collections, inspiring and empowering visitors to discover, learn, and create new knowledge—today and in the years ahead.

The Proposal

Archiving the undesirable, the forgotten, and abandoned — the New York Public Library’s dedication to unbiased archival continues.

As part of the Polonsky Exhibition revisiting some of the library’s finest archives, the NYPL will begin accepting small donations from visitors in order to illustrate our continued dedication to unbiased and nonpartisan archival research.

Function

Participants use provided hardware to photograph their object and label; then the images are uploaded to the designated folder for the code to manipulate.

The images are then manipulated by the coded algorithm to create the variety of combinations and the background for the logo.

This portion is done by p5.js, Javascript, HTML, and CSS.

Process

The design issue I grappled with the most was the conversion of the physical collected objects into digital layouts via code.

Image Manipulation

The next stop of the process was to determine how to manipulate the images once uploaded in order to be cohesive with the design and brand guidelines.

I experimented with masking, tint, and threshold in p5 to make the image combinations cohesive, yet with the individual objects still being identifiable.

Donations Collection

I tested my project by collecting donations from classmates, professors, and friends.

This image depicts a sampling of the objects I collected; some issues that arised were that people tried to donate food trash (not sanitary!) or would donate items that were too large to carry, such as water bottles, and I had to suggest they donate something else.

LABELS FILLED OUT BY PARTICIPANTS

Application

INTRO WALL GRAPHICS

FURTHER EXHIBITION GRAPHICS

Deliverables Application

BROCHURE APPLICATION & GRAPHICS

TICKET EPHEMERA

STICKERS EPHEMERA

SOCIAL MEDIA APPLICATION