Smithsonian Institute: Kaleidoscope
Client: Smithsonian Institute
Agency: Forum One
Project Management: Adriene Heppner
Design: Maggie Yuan
Background
The Smithsonian Institute’s Kaleidoscope series spotlights stories of resilience and perseverance in nature, history, and art. Stories of resilience offer a unique perspective on how the world and the inhabitants of it adapt and thrive. Forum One worked with SI to build out the digital exhibit and needed a way to call attention to it. SI chose to highlight the story of sustainable agriculture that provides a safe haven for migratory birds.
Production
“Like the ever-changing patterns of a kaliedoscope, our world is in constant motion.”
Forum One created some gorgeous abstract shapes to represent the fractals found inside a kaliedoscope, but they weren’t sure how to make them move (or if they should even move). The mosaic of faces on the Resilience website does a simple rotation as you scroll throw the page, but I didn’t feel like that translated well to an animated video or did the branding justice. I played around with the idea of the shapes in the logo “blooming” as they turn, but I needed to keep it subtle to not overwhelm the viewer in the short amount of time it spends on screen.
The character mosaic ended up being a bit more of a challenge than the logo. Even though faces were largely obfuscated in the original image, facial features were obvious. I needed to find a way to crop and reframe faces to retain those features as the kaleidoscope turned and changed shape. For added challenge, some of the faces in the original mosaic had been flattened with their mask, so I didn’t have the entire portrait to work with.