Opened in June 2019, Poster House presents a global view of posters from their earliest appearance in the late 1800s, to their present-day use through exhibitions, events, and publications. The museum takes its mission from the medium—aiming to engage and educate all audiences as it investigates this large format graphic design and its public impact.

Key to the project is the physical integration of the exhibits into the architecture that aligns with Poster House’s aesthetics and messaging. We created two digital interactive installations to foster visitor engagement and learning using multi-sensory approaches:

The Poster Wall is a specially engineered 82” 4K display through which visitors can explore a small portion of the Poster House’s growing archive by using a staged button as a controller. On idle mode, the screen showcases a grid of posters from the collection, automatically zooming into a random selection every few seconds. We built an operating system that was simple enough for the museum staff to autonomously maintain and update on a regular basis.

The Poster Machine is a set of three table-top interactive kiosks through which visitors can learn and experience the poster design process. Keeping the interface and navigation system as simple as possible, we created an application that is able to display over 143,000 images representing every possible path the user can take. Users are invited to customize their posters on-site by first choosing one of three themes: Propaganda, Film, or Advertising, before selecting a variety of symbols, colors, phrases, fonts, and design styles.