“That’s one small step for man,
one giant leap for mankind.”
Neil Armstrong
The exhibition
The Moon was a temporary exhibition that took place at National Maritime Museum in London between July 19, 2019 and January 5, 2020.
Beyond recounting the achievements of the Apollo space programme, The Moon exhibition charted humanity’s fascination for our cosmic companion with a dialogue between science and the arts in 180 objects spanning 2,500 years across cultures and continents.
The exhibition revealed the Moon as a mirror to humankind’s obsessions, endeavours and passions, but also that in the millennialong quest to reach another world, what truly mattered was not the journey, but the return.
“We came all this way to explore the Moon, and the most important thing is that we discovered the Earth”
Bill Anders
Design overview
The exhibition’s design allowed the wide range of objects all to be part of the story, balancing science and the spatial environment, underlying all with a strong sense of contemplation.
These achievements were contributed to by design choices, ranging from darker, sky-like colours through to more vibrant colours evoking the 1960s. The choice of materials referenced design patterns found amongst space agencies, such as the Réseau plate crosses seen in Apollo Mission photographs.
UI Design
Consistency with 2D Design
The design of the exhibition was done by Iris Butcher. I created a digital guidelines based on their proposal to make the digital environment consistent.
- Font:
The main font was ‘Futura’. We used this font in bold for main titles, light for texts and capital letters for buttons. - Colour:
Blue was the main colour for the exhibition, but each of the 4 sections had its own colours. I decided to use the main blue for the main frame and all these section colours as a secondary colour on the buttons and the background treatment. Texts were in blue for all the main screens and in black for the pop-up windows. - Colour treatment:
Plain colours without textures, gradients or shadows. - Shapes:
The main shapes for all designs were based on squares or rectangles.
- Background image treatment:
Only the attract screens had background image. To make all the images consistent and to reinforce the section colour I decided to add the registration marks that we are used to see in the Moon landing images. These registration marks were in the same colour as the section colour. - Frame:
All the contents had a frame, it was be blue for the main contents and white for the pop-up windows (same as the labels).
Consistency with the space
All the digital contents were designed in the appropriate scale according to the context. This means that all designs were proportional and designed based on percentage.
Proportions for a 67’’, 48” and 21” screen
Accessibility
- Physical access:
All the main interactions were placed in the lower half of the screen to make it more accessible. - Visual access:
The minimum font size used is 16px.
Contrast ratio between the texts and the background are between 7.28:1 and 21:1 (black over white). - Audio access:
All audio locutions had subtitles and British Sign Language (BSL).
