MoMA | Category: Tech

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December 4, 2009 | Collection & Exhibitions, Film, Tech

The Tim Burton Website: As Beetlejuice said, “Nice [bleeping] model!”

Posted by David Hart, Media Producer, Digital Media

A couple weeks back we previewed the Tim Burton exhibition site. Now that you’ve seen the initial directions that Big Spaceship proposed for the site, let’s see how they created the final product.

Process sketch from Big Spaceship

The Tim Burton Website: It’s Aliiiiiive!

Posted by David Hart, Media Producer, Digital Media

Months before an exhibition opens we meet to plan out any related online features. Since we’re a small team we often get developers or designers to help for bigger sites. For the Tim Burton exhibition, we worked with the Brooklyn company Big Spaceship, who built the site for our Contemporary Voices exhibition in 2005.

The Big Spaceship offices. No, they don't eat astronaut ice cream.

Having nearly broken my VHS copy of Beetlejuice from overuse while growing up, I knew the project would be an exciting one for a design firm to sink their teeth into. In the words of Big Spaceship, “Having the opportunity to work with MoMA for an artist as admirable as Tim Burton was amazing. The quality and imagination inherent to his art speak for themselves—we’re particularly inspired by his breadth of work and desire to experiment.”

One of the most exciting parts of the process is the concept meeting with the designers. After an initial meeting to discuss the exhibition, the crew from Big Spaceship put together three different directions for the site, and we sat down together with the curators to pick a design to build out. We asked them to talk about the three directions they proposed.

Bauhaus: from Weimar to the Web

Posted by Allegra Burnette, Creative Director, Digital Media

Screenshot of the timeline section of the website

Screenshot of the timeline section of the Bauhaus 1919–1933: Workshops for Modernity website

Though the contributors from our department (Digital Media) might occasionally indulge in geek speak, we wanted to offer a behind-the-scenes glimpse into some of the projects and collaborations in which we are involved across the Museum and beyond.

We are particularly excited about the slew of exhibitions coming up, starting with Bauhaus 1919–1933: Workshops for Modernity, which opens this month. For the exhibition site, we worked with Hello Design in California. We hadn’t worked with them before, but we liked their approach to content and design for the subject matter. Because the Bauhaus has been such an inspiration to so many who came after, we asked Hello what inspired them. How did they create a simple, functional site that captures the spirit of the Bauhaus?