Coordinating and designing the history for our states centennial WAS fun and it was educational. Arizona is enriched with beautiful places, natural resources, fabulous people (past and present) and abounding opportunities. It was also an honor to be chosen. We met and worked with hundreds of new people, now friends as well.

The JRC team started on May 24th with our first meeting with ICON Themed Environments and finished up, literally 100 days later. The last file of the fourth pavilion was uploaded to the production FTP site on September 1. JRC Design was responsible for the initial interior visitor experience concepts for all pavilions, theme and outlines for the interpretive stations; research and content development for all stories; and coordination with all agencies, groups, publishers, photographers, historians, and the client.

 

As the designer, JRC Design worked hand in hand with ICON to create the first four of six traveling pavilions. The pavilions are 30×60 in size, soft sided tents and are portable mini museums. The celebrations are built on a Thursday night, open on Friday, run through the weekend and are torn down and packed up on that Sunday night – for business to start on Monday … as usual. They include interactive and educational components, artifacts and models in custom cases, and hundreds of stories and images of Arizona history.

Rocky the Ringtail, the Arizona State Parks junior ranger mascot was also “redesigned” for them during the process, as a photo-op inside the “AMAZING Natural Resources” pavilion.

 

Two additional pavilion designs are on the boards right now for the Tucson and Phoenix celebrations in early 2012 – If you are an Arizonan, please go and be a part of the state‘s history – where you can see first hand our exhibit work.

A very much needed non-profit organization in rural West Central Indiana where, more often than not, what many of us call pets, are really only seen as four-legged animals that are disposable, and usually not in a humane way. This group’s mission is to provide shelter and sanctuary to homeless, abused, neglected or stray hounds and horses, and if possible find permanent homes with like-minded animal lovers. Or let them live out their lives in a safe environment. So of course we picked this group to help in developing a way to assist them in raising awareness and money– as we are animal lovers and pet owners at JRC.

 

They would need to be set apart from many other animal welfare groups as they are quite unique. Hooves and Hounds is just not about saving animals. These hounds and horses are also teamed up with abused children – to help them regain trust, love and self esteem.

 

We started with developing a logo, integrating a dog and horse into a mark that exemplifies their positive traits. This is the first step to building an identity and brand for the organization. The logo’s goal is to create an emotional tie to the organization‘s mission, and to compel the public to donate. And to donate, people want to feel that their money will be going to a reputable and action-oriented organization. To do this, and keep people well informed in an economical way, a webpage is the answer. A good website can build credibility by looking unique and professionally designed. It can help build a support group of like minded people and allow them to keep in touch. It can be friendly to donators by using safe money gathering processes, and keep those donors up-to-date on where their monies are being spent through news updates and photo galleries of adoptable and adopted animals and progress of the building of the facility.

 

Currently we are in the development phase of Hooves and Hounds website architecture and researching the SEO for the site. Check back soon for the link to the operating website. And, hey, make a donation to a very worthy cause. Every penny, nickel, dime, quarter or dollar will make a difference.