Milton Hershey School
Visitor Center
Environmental / Motion Design
Interactive DesignAs Creative Director for the Founders Hall Visitor Center, I lead a team of designers, animators, and developers to create four large scale interactive and experiential pieces. These pieces required a significant deep dive into the historical archives of the school, working with their directory fo history to create compelling narratives that walked visitors through the rich history of the school’s founding and future.
Client: Milton Hershey School | Agency: Bluecadet
Role: Creative Director | Motion Design | Experiential Design | Illustration | Sound Editing
75ft RotundaThe hallmark piece of the Founders Hall Visitor’s Center experience has to be the projection mapped animation on the 75 ft tall rotunda, the second largest in the nation.
One of the most challenging parts of this piece was that the client wanted more than to just project flashy graphics onto the interior of the rotunda, but rather to tell the story of Milton Hershey’s life. At this scale, visual storytelling had to take a very different approach. Using Milton Hershey’s own words, supplementary text and audio helped carry the visual narrative.
As the Creative Director on the project, I lead a team of designers and animators to tackle the monumental scale of this piece, using historical imagery, custom illustrations, and elegant animations to bring the story to life.
Projection MappingTo make it all work, we utilized projection mapping, syncing 2 large hidden projectors to stitch all the visuals together. This worked in conjunction with programmable LED lights in the oculus of the rotunda.
History ProjectionAnother projection mapped pieces was a historical narrative detailing the creation and directive of the school. This was accomplished by projecting onto a series of layered semi-transparent scrims. The result allowing for projection to pierce through onto the various layers, and take the viewer through the decades of the schools history.
Digital YearbookThis interactive piece combines a digital kiosk with a large scale projection, allowing visitor’s to explore the school’s history through its yearbooks. Broken up into time periods, the visual correpsond to those eras, giving viewings a glimpse into school life throughout the decades.
The large scale projection on the facing wall creates an ever shifting yearbook collage, programmatically pulling in hundreds of clips photos to create a dynamic display that’s never the same twice. As visitors explore the decades, the projects shifts to highlight that same period.
And moreThroughout Founders Hall, visitors are able to experience rich stories, large projection experiential pieces, interactive pillars and kiosks, and interpretive graphics.
“Blown away is the term we’ve been using this whole time”
— Susan Alger; Coordinator, MHS