PM insanity - venue visit and design meeting notes

To say there was a venue managing nightmare end of last week (thursday pm / friday) in regards to arranging the visit to the exhibition site would be a huge understatement, enough to test the patience of any project manager! But all sorted in the end thank god. Huge sigh of relief. 

Today I've been writing out the notes from the design meeting from 20th Sept, meeting I arranged with Oliver Tomlinson (Tomlinson Designs, London) who agreed to meet with us for some feedback and advice. Really invaluable, Kings place was fantastic! Great tip from Nicole (CSM marketing) - must upload my photos that I took.  

Anyway, email to design related peeps  meeting attendees etc (Hun, Juliette, Joseph, Meg, Kristian, Bushra)

Just spent this afternoon writing the design meeting notes up (took
much longer than I thought) and throwing together a graphic verision
of what was scribbled very roughtly at the meeting for room layout and
how to direct the current of people etc.
Oliver was a fantastic help and very kind of him to come and meet with
us for feedback and advice, he said he'd like to be kept up to date
with proceedings and will be of any further help to us if he can. He
also said he can't wait to come and see the exhibition in action.

Read the word document notes first and then the room layout graphic
will make more sense.
@Juliette, please can you liaise with Hun nxt week so he can fill you
in more thoroughly from the meeting and to make a list of identified
key priorities for when you go to see the exhibition site on thursday
this week?
So far still no meeting planned for this coming tuesday due to lack of
venue, any thoughts/ideas? Otherwise no group meeting (will announce
by end of monday), and concentrate on any prep for thursday site
viewing (Bushra, Juliette, Meg, Christina and Verdiana - make sure
everybody talks to each other so venue team can put together a
thorough report for PM after the visit with any venue points
concerning the other groups)

@Hun, there is a deadline end of this week for submission of
artwork/graphic files to the designers helping us with the CR
advertising, is that all under control?
Take care all and hope you're feeling better Kristian :-)
Rach.

Tomlinsondesign_meeting.zip
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Notes from Design meeting

Tuesday 20^th September

Attendees:

Hun Wynn

Rachel Dunscombe

Joseph Adjei

Meg Konovska

Oliver Tomlinson (Tomlinson Designs in London, MA in Information Design) 

Colour coded groups extremely good idea. Easier to identify quickly / at a glance. Looks really good in the periodic table layout. Not too many different groups or it will be overly confusing, keep it to a few groups 4-5 maximum.

Mix up colour groups around the room rather than put everyone green in the ‘green’ part of the room, and everyone red in the ‘red’ part of the room and so on. Don’t separate too much, clear separation won’t encourage people to look around topic areas they wouldn’t usually think to look at. (Boxes of colour around the room to ‘jumble things up’? hanging, on the wall etc?)

Reaction to periodic table theme: is it science? Play more on ‘experiments’.

Decision: Shots of drink in test tubes at the bar.

Bar area down opposite end to entrance, no congestion near entrance or exhibits. (“Bar needs to be the thing you need right at the end, in order to go past everything else”)

Make a ‘gathering’ zone. Projection of viral for watching (e.g. wall behind bar, people can watch and drink / chat) Could have sponsor wall in this area. 

A few square cube seats (colour matching groups?) near work and gathering zone. Few down each side of room (source: equipment hire?) Needs to be some available seating options, somewhere to also sit and also just watch the work (like in a gallery). Make it a feature. Keep in theme with the boxes / elements.

Room layout, will need to use partition walls in strip down centre (most efficient use of gaining more exhibit space) not enough room for student work just to go around edge of walls.

Need to allocate a fixed equal size space per student (e.g. 1-2 m *square* – need precise measurements and final count of students exhibiting. Confirm who is dropping out.)

Student can fill / not fill space as much as they want, but keep everything consistent. Each student an equal ‘element’. Need to communicate asap (as soon as final count and measurements complete in site) must be soon, before students start on any oversized artefact plans!

Need to identify room constraints asap. Priority! (what are we allowed to do / not do? Fix things to wall, floor, ceiling etc). Liaise with venue, site visit. Priority.

Entrance feature: periodic table plan, colour coded boxes, stand no and student name (equivalent to map, open plan simple room, don’t really need a ‘map’ of the room on each exhibition guide, make the map a feature instead)

(feature: periodic poster done by someone with wicked design skills? Built piece for mounting on the wall? e.g. using small boxes? must be colour coded and name / stand no on each box.

Question: How could the information guide represent the journey?

Idea: Build your own guide.

Each visitor takes / is given the guide ‘construction pieces’ on entrance. 

Example idea: firm base card, printing on front and back, tool attaches to hold collected stand cards, fix and flip. 

(card front)

Exhibition title, date

Intro text to exhibition (2 sentences max)

Info graphic (how to make your own show guide, simple clear instruction graphic)

(card back)

Colour code

Who’s who (student names / list)

Stand number

Pre hole punched branded info cards (postcards) per stand – strictly to brand. Set up template, student fills in content and returns. Single print run.

Tool to keep together (need to research best type of tool, not fiddly! Must be simple and easy to use, needs to hold up to 65 cards)