Night Kitchen President Matthew Fisher recalls that Sendak was an “essential ingredient in the imaginative landscape of my childhood, always evoking the rich juxtapositions of wild and tame, bizarre and familiar, and fantastic and intimate.” For Director of Learning Strategies, Stacey Mann, Sendak’s illustrations, perhaps more than the stories themselves, captured her childhood imagination and continue to inspire her as an adult.  Sendak’s stories are not without morals; Information Designer Kathy McHoes notes that “the idea that you can meet others that are not like you and still connect with them,” an undercurrent of Where the Wild Things Are, continues to resonate with her.

Personally, I always identified with the belligerent Pierre, whose mantra, “I don’t care” echoed my own independence and stubbornness, traits I now see in my own daughter.  Sendak’s characters, like Pierre, Mickey, and Max, do not conform to the sweet children found in your run of the mill children’s books, and that’s a good thing.

In an interview with Fresh Air’s Terry Gross, Sendak recalled a young boy who received a postcard featuring a hand drawn Wild Thing in response to his fan letter to Sendak. Instead of preserving this prized original drawing, the boy ate it as an act of love. It is no surprise that Sendak in turn loved this response. This is how his unconventional characters might respond: with imagination, unpredictability, and love.

Maurice, we will miss you and continue to draw inspiration from you in all our storytelling. But rather than be melancholy, let the wild rumpus begin!

Client: The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
Project: Website Redesign

The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History sought to redesign their web presence in order to provide teachers, students and affiliates access to essays, primary sources, programs, video lectures and more through an intuitive and sophisticated website.

Client: The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
Project: Website Redesign

Inspiration

The Gilder Lehrman Institute houses one of the most renowned collections of historical documents in the United States. In addition, their vast Affiliate program and teacher development workshops reach thousands of educators, helping them to teach American History more effectively in classrooms all over the nation. Night Kitchen Interactive redesigned their existing website to integrate the richness of their collections with their vast selection of educational resources and facilitate easy access by teachers across the country.

Narration

Playing on the Gilder Lehrman Institute’s strength in collections, the website seamlessly integrates lesson plans, historical essays, collections, and videos for teacher and classroom use. Visitors can explore timelines, primary sources, and multimedia by era and theme, and create their own customized list of favorites throughout the site.

Design

The redesigned website enables students and educators to easily locate a wealth of content right from the homepage. Call-outs draw the visitor’s attention to related content on the site, providing multiple entry points into the resources and programs available through the Institute.

Interaction

Teachers can create, share and publish annotated lists of educational resources, enabling them to customize their collection for use in the classroom. Teachers can also recommend materials and connect with each other through the online community.

Client: Philadelphia History Museum at the Atwater Kent
Project: City Stories Media Installation

The Philadelphia History Museum has emerged from a three-year hiatus and opened its doors, showcasing the first of many exhibits that reflect the institution’s fresh approach to audience engagement and local history. City Stories, an interactive orientation gallery, introduces visitors to the newly-renovated museum through a compelling mix of historical artifacts, insightful narratives, and local stories of everyday Philadelphians.

Client: Philadelphia History Museum at the Atwater Kent
Project: City Stories Media Installation

Inspiration

As part of their institutional renovation project, the Philadelphia History Museum collaborated with Night Kitchen Interactive to create a multimedia installation integrated within the City Stories exhibition in the museum’s orientation gallery. Historical narratives are presented alongside heartfelt interviews of local individuals and a dynamic, crowd-sourced tag cloud, reflecting the museum’s dedication towards audience engagement and community connections.

Narration

The orientation gallery introduces visitors to Philadelphia’s 300-year history, juxtaposed with five media screens that capture contemporary life. These displays present interviews and poignant quotes about the city and its inhabitants, offering visitors an insightful view into the community, stories and history that embody Philadelphia.

Design

Interspersed between historical artifacts are the stories of everyday residents, describing the city’s unique identity and celebrating their love of the region’s people, places, and culture. The video loop also highlights notable quotes by well-known Philadelphians as well as video excerpts from around the city, creating an immersive and insightful experience for visitors.

Interaction

A dynamic, crowd-sourced tag cloud compels visitors to participate and contribute their voice to the exhibition by submitting their own tags via text message, describing what Philadelphia means to them. Words and phrases weave together to produce an ever-evolving window how visitors perceive The City of Brotherly Love.

Client: Thomas Jefferson Foundation
Project: Three Online Exhibits Explore Slavery at Jefferson’s Monticello

Three online exhibits interpret plantation slavery at Monticello—the home of Thomas Jefferson and his family, as well as enslaved individuals, hired workers, and indentured servants. Drawing on oral history interviews, archaeological evidence, and historical research, these websites present 3D renderings of buildings, interactive maps, dynamically linked profiles of the individuals who lived and worked at Monticello, and family trees of their relatives and descendants, engaging visitors in paradoxical issues of slavery and liberty.

Client: Thomas Jefferson Foundation
Project: Three Online Exhibits Explore Slavery at Jefferson’s Monticello

Inspiration

Developed in conjunction with two physical exhibits, one on site at Monticello and another hosted by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, Slavery at Jefferson’s Monticello: Paradox of Liberty, Getting Word: African American Families of Monticello, and Landscape of Slavery: Mulberry Row provide a comprehensive online exploration of the lives of individuals who lived and worked at Jefferson’s plantation and the descendants of Monticello’s enslaved families.

Narration

The history of Monticello’s enslaved community is illuminated through audio and video of those descended from Monticello’s enslaved families, compelling 3D animations of the spaces where individuals lived and worked, and interpretive text exploring themes including resistance, religion, and race. These websites add a human dimension to the Monticello narrative, allowing visitors to contemplate the legacy of Jefferson from the perspective of those who labored for him and expand our understanding of his paradoxical legacy.

Design

Designed to complement the physical exhibitions and align with Monticello.org, the individual websites immerse visitors within individual stories, the lost spaces of Mulberry Row, and the diaspora of Monticello’s descendants, encouraging exploration and discovery. Rich media elements including video, period imagery and interactive maps, combine with call-outs to highlight related resources throughout the sites and create an integrated online experience for visitors.

Interaction

The Drupal-based websites are integrated with the existing web presence for Monticello, allowing for cross-pollinated information and seamless navigation. Visitors can watch videos, listen to stories, wander along maps, browse galleries and contemplate the hard decisions slaves made. Within each site, visitors can use their Monticello.org community membership to comment, tag, and favorite material, engaging in a continuing dialogue on the complex legacy of those who lived and worked at Monticello.

This double session, which will be presented at the annual meeting of the American Association of Museums, will focus on the practical application of the creative design process.

The first half of the session will introduce brainstorming methods and challenge groups to think big. The second half will help groups turn big ideas into innovative and realistic design solutions via charrettes. Chairperson Dan Kuetemeyer will be joined by Stacey Mann and six other museums professionals to enable attendees to discover new ways to collaborate creatively within their organizations.

Faced with the practical limitations of exhibiting rare books, we’re partnering with the Chemical Heritage Foundation to provide an exploratory interface that will allow visitors to page through the texts, reveal hidden clues in the complex imagery and view translations of the historical texts through an intuitive and elegant interface that highlights the beauty and complexity of these historical books.

As a companion activity to the physical exhibition, we’re also developing a social media initiative to encourage visitors to search for alchemy-inspired symbols and objects beyond the museum and in their everyday lives.

Digitized collections records, curricular materials, and multimedia gathered from the museum’s existing YouTube and ArtBabble channels will be accessible through a comprehensive web presence, enabling visitors to find specific information by region, format, curricular subject, grade level and keyword.

Social features including commenting, tagging, favoriting, and sharing will enable visitors to engage in meaningful dialogue around the collections and educational programs. New and upcoming educational programs will also be dynamically populated from the museum’s event calendar into the educational portal using the Drupal content management system.

By providing visitors with multiple means of accessing the museum’s collection and educational resources, the Asian Art Museum is engaging with their audiences and establishing themselves as a go-to resource for Asian arts, culture, and traditions on the web.

Entry level positions in this industry are few and far between, and often require some experience, regardless. So how do you get that experience? I have a few suggestions. First off, some of the key traits we look for in our entry level candidates are initiative and motivation, in addition to skills and talent. So I would recommend finding something that you are passionate about and continue to work on it while you are looking for a job. Build your portfolio, grow your body of work and your skill base while you search for jobs. One cannot search for jobs all of the time. This will illustrate to your potential employer that you have the initiative they value. So when people ask what you’ve been doing since you graduated, you don’t just say that you’ve been pounding the pavement.

Some organizations offer paid (and free) internships, even for graduates. This is a great way to gain experience, on-the-job, while making at least some money. Usually its not enough to live on, but neither is being unemployed and looking for work. I understand a lot of folks need to take some kind of a part or full time job to pay the rent, whether its waiting tables or working retail, while they look for a job in their industry. But if you don’t, then internships are great. And even if you do, you might be able to swing a 20 hour a week internship and a part-time job. A number of our interns have done exactly that. And the internship doesn’t always have to be with a design company for it to be rewarding. Instead, think about a wider range of companies and organizations who could use your skills, and search out internship opportunities with them. Sometimes they don’t have anything posted, but you can still reach out to them. Some of our interns have come to us because they were motivated and reached out, and in turn we made a position for them. This is rare, but it happens. If you are talented and resourceful, you will find a lot of organizations out there who could use your services, particularly if you are willing to work as an intern. Be creative and follow your interests.

Another excellent approach is to find an organization or a cause that you are committed to and offer to provide them services, pro bono. Doing work for a client, even if its not paid work, is excellent experience and a great resume-builder. If you get a few of these jobs under your belt, it shows potential employers that you are motivated and that you know how to work with clients, which is one of the more challenging aspects of design. Another great aspect of working with clients is that it helps with networking. If you do a good job for them, they are liable to recommend you to someone else, who might be a paying customer or a potential employer. But even if it doesn’t lead directly to paying work, it builds your network, which is the next major thing to work on.

Building your network is possibly the most important aspect of getting a job, as a beginner even more so than later in your career. Once you build up experience, your network is still important, but your resume will open up more doors on its own. But in the beginning, you have very little to recommend you over other recent graduates. With someone to vouch for you, you will stand out. So how do you do this when you don’t yet have a job in the industry? Well here is where PANMA and so many of the other professional networks (formal and informal) come in handy. Go out to the events. They are free (most of them), they are instructive (usually), and they are social. You will meet people. You will put a face to your name.

I know this sort of thing can make a lot of people really uncomfortable, but its so important that you do it. You don’t need to present yourself as anything but what you are: A recent grad in design who is looking for work. Now I know that’s not much of a conversation starter for some, but think about this: If you are actively working on your design portfolio, you can tell people about that. Even better, you can hand people a card with a URL where your online portfolio resides. If you’ve continued to develop it post graduation, it will show. If you can talk about how you are freelancing with a few clients, say a local non-profit or a community organization, then you really have something to talk about. And if you are doing this, you’ll probably have lots of questions - questions that more experienced folks out there are usually happy to answer. How much should I charge? How do I keep the project in scope? How do I get the client to stop making changes? Sticky issues like this are exactly the kind of thing that people swap stories about over a beer at a PANMA event, or at other meetups and design groups. And as you build relationships with others in your industry, you’ll be surprised what doors that will open for you.

Well, I could go on and on, but those are the big ones that I can think of. Oh, just one more thing: Keep a positive attitude and don’t give up. I know it can be challenging, but its probably the biggest difference between the people who make it in their industry of choice and the people who don’t. IMHO.

Good luck!

Client: Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum
Project: How Things Fly Interactive Website

The How Things Fly website provides activities, videos, imagery and information as an online accompaniment to the physical exhibition on view at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum.

Client: Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum
Project: How Things Fly Interactive Website

Inspiration

The Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum wanted to create a dynamic, highly engaging web presence for its How Things Fly exhibition. The website, like its physical gallery space, offers multiple activities to help visitors learn about the mechanics of air and space flight through an active, dynamic site where visitors can learn by doing.

Narration

Focused on building a step-by-step understanding of the principles of flight such as drag, lift, thrust, and weight, the narrative lessons are supplemented by imagery, short videos, interactive activities and diagrams. While geared primarily to middle-school students, the site frames college-level physics in a way that is engaging for younger audiences while maintaining an underlying authority that speaks to adults.

Design

Although the site can be experienced in a linear fashion, all of the activities can be explored independently. A comprehensive gallery of multimedia and activities featured on the site enable visitors to find information on specific principles (such as thrust, buoyancy or propulsion) or by multimedia type, which ranges from interactive activities to hands-on experiments.

Interaction

Among other interactions, visitors can create a virtual shockwave, design their own paper airplane, or explore the inner workings of engines. Social media devotees can launch a paper airplane into the world of Facebook or Twitter and watch how far it travels. Visitors can also submit their questions online to NASM’s “Explainers” - educational volunteers who demonstrate a variety of scientific principles involved in flight through on-site demonstrations, webisodes, and the online forum of questions and answers.

The website is a companion piece to TJF’s physical exhibition Slavery at Jefferson’s Monticello: Paradox of Liberty, which brings to light the history of individuals and families who lived and worked at the plantation.