Rainbow Market, 2013

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Rainbow Market was designed as a colorful town square with a farmers' market, food truck, and home kitchen. Photo courtesy of Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose.

Ideation sketch for Rainbow Market: one of the preliminary sketches I used to show the landscape of the exhibition and give a taste of the layout, look and feel. Rudimentary as it is, this kind of sketch worked well for colleagues in internal cross-departmental meetings.

Palette: a combination of photos of real product samples and inspiration images to communicate the colors and textures of the materials I chose for the exhibition. I create these palettes so I can visualize the way the materials will work with one another, but other exhibit team members sometimes find them useful and marketing can find inspiration in the colors.

Floorplan: I use floorplans to establish relationships between exhibits, predict traffic flow, and to make sure I'm including wide paths for wheelchair accessibility and clear emergency exit routes. When presenting floorplans to folks outside the exhibits department, I show them side-by-side with an ideation sketch to help make the 2D/3D connection.

Scale elevation view of Cornhusk Doll making station: I create these scale drawings to establish relationships between exhibit elements and envision visitors in the space. Drawings like this will inform my dimensioned orthographic drawings. Because elevations are easier to understand than plans, I sometimes use these drawings in conversations outside the exhibit department.

Orthographic scale drawing of the Food Truck: I lay out all exhibit elements orthographically to inform the production drawings. The production drawings are then drawn up using 3D solid modeling software. Because the focus here is on scale and dimensions, this kind of drawing is meant for use by the exhibits team. We use screen shots of the computer model to show externally or to folks in other departments.

Photo collage of Rethink Your Drink display: a photo collage is a quick method for me to show exhibit elements in a concrete, photorealistic way. I created this image for our funder to understand exactly how we planned to engage adults with their "Rethink Your Drink" message.

Building the Rainbow Food Truck in the workshop. Photo courtesy of Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose.

Installing the exhibit. Photo courtesy of Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose.

We wanted the home fascade to feel like it belonged in San Jose, a town full of Mediterranean-style bungalows. To achieve this look, I applied stucco to the wall and painted it a vibrant yellow. I spec'd a faux clay mission tile for the roof and worked with fabricators to make the window grill. The Mexican tile house numbers read "180", the address of the Museum. Photo courtesy of http://www.blog.udn.com

All signage at Children's Discovery Museum is in three languages: English, Spanish, and Vietnamese. When I designed the graphics for Rainbow Market, I used fruit and vegetable skins as textures for the color signs. The textures add interest to the color fields without specifiying which ingredient belongs where. This eases restocking. For example, if we are out of green peppers for the green bin, we can use broccoli instead and the signage still works. Photo courtesy of Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose.

The farmers' market stalls inspire creative role play with details like aprons, scales, cash boxes, and working calculators. Each bin is color-coded to encourage little shop-owners to sort and display their wares. Photo courtesy of Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose.

Little chefs choose and weigh their plastic produce. Photo courtesy of Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose.

Rainbow Market has lots of seating for grownups to take a load off and watch their children cook and serve healthy meals. Photo courtesy of Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose.