An Tilleadh Exhibition Design

Case Study

Aug 30

Leaflet for the An Tilleadh Exhibition event in Ness Lewis

Based in Ness, Isle of Lewis, Comunn Eachraidh Nis (Ness Historical Society) is a museum and archive of life in North Lewis.

They launched a new exhibition in 2023, during which time Bronze Age artefacts discovered around Ness were returned home for a special year-long loan from the National Museum of Scotland.

I was commissioned to design the exhibition, creating an informative and attractive visual system for the exhibition space and branding for promotion and merchandise.

Visual identity

The first step in the project development was setting out a visual identity. This came together quite quickly with a distinct wordmark using the gorgeous contemporary Blackletter font BN Tillman by Bandon Nickerson Studio.

The colour palette was picked up from the photographs of the artefacts. I needed quite a wide range of colours as we knew we’d be using illustrations for the panels and had to give myself a good set of tones for these. I also set ‘tints’ as part of the palette to further increase the range.

Main exhibition logo

Colour palette for an exhibition system — *Palette for the exhibition system based on the colours of the artefacts.*

Timeline

Once we’d agreed upon this look, it was time to plan the panels to go in the exhibition space. We devised a ‘Timeline’ panel for the reverse of a large sliding door in the space. This would give people a visual sense of the historical context of the Bronze age with other points in Global and Scottish history.

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Bronze Age Panels

To further contextualise the period in which the artefacts were made, we devised two illustrative panels focussing on life in the Bronze Age. The panels featured clothing, food, shelter, trade routes and beliefs, all using illustrations and infographics to help being the information to life.

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“From the very start of the project, Pearse has consistently had brilliant ideas for the exhibition. He was super professional throughout and made sure deadlines were met for the installation. We couldn’t have put on this important event without him.”

Anne Macleod | Director of Operations | Ness Historical Society

Artefacts Panel

Before arriving at the artefacts, we wanted to give as much detail about them as possible. I was very lucky to be supplied with excellent photography by the National Museum of Scotland of the Artefacts.

These became the basis of the panels populated with facts and points of interest on the objects.

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Exhibition Case

The case containing the artefacts sat at the centre of the room. I wanted to keep the information here minimal and for the focus to remain on the objects in the case.

‘An Tilleadh’ by Pàdraig MacAoidh is a Gàidhlig poem commissioned by CEN to commemorate the event. The poem and its English translation are left above the case as an emotional reflection of the significance of the objects. This is framed by a brushed steel logo sign.

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Location Panels

For the last section before you leave the exhibit, we devised panels about the discovery of the objects and their location in relation to the venue.

Both finds had interesting backstories and brought the whole project back to Ness and the local area.

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Merchandise & Marketing

In addition to the design needs of the exhibition space, the event required promotional material and merchandise items to sell in the shop. One of the main pieces was an ‘Event Guide,’ which gathered all the information from the exhibition into an A4 booklet.

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