Big Story, Small Space: How to Cut Content and Make it Count

Monday, November 28, 2016 3:20 PM by Taylor Studios in General


The National Association for Interpretation National Conference was last week, and we are celebrating the hard work of interpreters everywhere with a series of blog posts focused specifically on Interpretation and Interpretive Planning. Past posts include:

How to Create Powerful Themes That Capture Attention

Why You Should Care About Co-Curatorial Exhibits

When Can Multiple Stakeholders Be Bad For Your Project?

Big Story, Small Space: How to Cut Content and Make it Count

We face it all the time – our clients have literally thousands of stories they want to include in their exhibits, but only a small amount of physical space.  Cabinets full of artifacts and reams full of information must be distilled into a limited amount of square feet.  Even Harry Houdini couldn’t pull it off in the prime of his career!  At the end of the day, your physical space is a very real limitation to the amount of “stuff” that you can show, and a lot of content simply has to be cut.

So the question becomes, how do you decide which content to keep and which to get rid of?  The answer is never simple, but professional interpreters use an organized method to help them make these tough decisions.  Our interpretive staff at Taylor Studios works intimately with our clients, leading them through this difficult but necessary process.

We begin by having our clients develop a “Central Theme.”  This is a one-sentence, single-idea theme that becomes the overarching theme of the entire project.  It is the focus and guiding principle behind all of the interpretation within all of the exhibits at the space.  It connects tangible things (the site, the unique resources at the site, etc.) to universal intangibles (e.g. family, struggles, love, perseverance).  An example of a good Central Theme: The unique but susceptible habitats at Smith Park demonstrate both the adaptability of ecosystems and the struggles to survive.

Once our clients develop their “Central Theme,” they are equipped with the most powerful tool in determining which content to feature in their limited exhibit space.  Everything that is developed from here on out – be it content development or design – must relate back to the Central Theme.  When we or our clients are puzzling over whether to include a certain subtheme, storyline, artifact, or image, we step back and ask ourselves if it relates to the Central Theme.  If so, it remains on the list of possible content to include in the exhibits.  If not, we have no qualms about throwing it out.  Including too much disparate information in an exhibit space merely confuses your visitors.  Being selective in what you present – and always relating it to a single Central Theme – produces not only a focused and coherent interpretive project, but also one that your visitors will remain engaged with.

Even when our clients narrow down their content to only that which relates to their Central Theme, they usually still have too many stories, artifacts, and images to fit in their limited space.  It is then that we work intimately with them, using a few other tried-and-true practices of the interpretive field.  Among other suggestions, we tell them to:

  • Gather all of the content that they want to include, and eliminate all duplicate, similar, and repetitive content. For example, include only one story about pollination!

  • Find representative examples – for example, rather than telling multiple stories about the impact of drought, find one powerful story that by itself illustrates all or most of the impact.

  • Use creative approaches, both low-tech and high-tech, to layer content. For example, if you can afford computer stations, almost unlimited amounts of content can be included within a small physical space.  A mid-price option could include showing dynamic videos in your space, which could tell multiple stories all on a single video screen.  Low-tech options include flip-books, which can layer multiple stories within a small space perhaps only the size of a sheet of paper!

Finally, when all else fails, we remind our clients to “think like the visitor.”  Too often, many of our clients are the world-renowned experts in their field, and they know so much more than the common visitor and are far more interested in the content.  To them, every story seems interesting and every piece of content is easy to understand.  We remind our clients that unfortunately most of their visitors will not be interested in the depth of content that experts are, and that exhibits must be both captivating and easy to understand.  By “thinking like the visitor,” our clients can often determine which content can stay and which needs to go.

What do you think?  How have you faced this problem of “too many stories and too little space”?

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