ELEVATIONS

This project is a visual communication system for three of our National Parks: Yosemite, Yellowstone, and Grand Tetons. Each park is assigned two posters, displayed left to right, coinciding with their geographic locations across the country. My intention in this exhibition was to create something more visually interesting than the currently utilized and dated materials available throughout the parks. Massimo Vignelli created the Unigrid system for the National Park Service. This system was created as a standard organizational tool for all of the parks graphics and production components. While the Unigrid system is highly functional, it lacks the visual appeal desired by a modern audience. This exhibition proposes a system that gives artistic freedom to designers but maintains uniformity in content delivery; the panels presented here illustrates this potential unification of creative expression and informational content. Using Adobe Illustrator, I included distinctive visuals that showcase relevant content representing the parks themselves and the data introduced. The layout is consistent and intentionally made to be a vessel for other artists to create their own interpretations for different parks. The information layout would remain the same and keep uniformity, but still present a plethora of different designs.

The information within the posters is centered around elevation and geology to inform the readers of what makes up the parks they are visiting. Massimo Vignelli set the bar high when he created a legacy with his national park designs. On my pieces, the large fields of black containing content was a decision made as a nod to my admiration for the Unigrid system. The photographs included in the design were taken by me and all the components used in the designs are relevant to the parks. Each park’s design contains a topographic map and an elevation marker of a summit found at the corresponding location. The other elements used are more custom to the location and differ across the boards while keeping consistency throughout the designs.

A personal connection I discovered throughout my process is that I was using the elevation as a metaphor for my journey as a designer and the process of creating. I experimented a lot with layering for this exhibition. Each poster is created from text and graphics stacked one over the other, and there is a raised section on the poster, alluding to the concept of the entire design: elevation. This was my final design project, the final climb to reach the top of my undergraduate career, and I connected that to the feeling of when I was hiking up the summits in these very parks. The more I ascended, the clearer my vision became to me. The process of creating these designs pushed my creative limits as a designer and forced me to put more consideration into my work; I knew what my vision was, but I was unsure of how to get there. This journey served as clarity for who I want to be as a designer, and as my process ended, with the confidence gained, I am very proud of what I was able to accomplish.