Writing and Designing Text to be Read
Exhibition Graphics: Writing to be Read
About the Washakie Museum: The Washakie Museum in Worland, Wyoming, opens its new state-of-the-art museum in May 2010. ECOS planned, designed, and produced the facility’s 5,000 square-foot permanent exhibition about the paleontology, archaeology, and non-Native settlement of the Big Horn Basin.
The Washakie Museum contains more than 200 interpretive panels. That’s a lot of information, which calls for a lot of reading. Of course, ECOS wants visitors to be engaged while they’re in the museum. Visitors should understand and enjoy the science and history of the Big Horn Basin—that is, after all, why they’re there. But, this can be tricky: Most museum visitors don’t read exhibition graphics from start to finish. Some barely glance at labels at all, particularly after the first few panels.
We know that clear content organization and savvy copywriting make a huge difference in how much visitors read and how much they remember. When ECOS developed the graphics for the Washakie Museum, we addressed this issue from the earliest concepts.
Short Text
ECOS has found that visitors are more likely to read text presented in short paragraphs. So our exhibit developers wrote most text blocks to contain between 35 and 40 words.
Conversant Tone
Museums are informal learning environments, not lecture halls; visitors respond best to labels written in a casual, non-academic style. So, ECOS used a relaxed tone, informal questions, and everyday references to keep the text accessible for visitors. For example:
Layered Copy
We began with a layered approach to graphic design. We set up each panel with levels of take-away messages: a quick read (snappy and informative headline), a brief overview of the subject (explanatory subhead), and short but informative text (copy block).
Highlights
To further encourage and aid visitors to grasp the essential ideas, we graphically “featured” key text within each paragraph using bold type and secondary colors. This helps speed-reading museum-goers pick out the most important parts. It’s a trick we borrowed from the advertising world: Advertisers often use this technique to focus viewers’ attention, but it isn’t broadly implemented in museums.
Stand-Alone Captions
ECOS also finds that many museum guests read photo captions first. Some read only the captions, skipping main text blocks altogether. For this reason, we made certain the text under each photo and artifact stands on its own.
Finally, we selected the best photographs, unearthed historic documents, and commissioned detailed illustrations to enhance our stories. We placed them in compelling yet simple graphic layouts to capture interest. Once visitors are interested, they’re more likely to actually read those short paragraphs of carefully crafted text.
See for yourself. Below is a graphic panel from the Washakie Museum. Click to enlarge, using the magnifying glass to look more closely.
