Alexander Isley is president of Alexander Isley Inc., a Graphic Design Consultancy in Redding, Conn., and New York, NY.

Retail graphic program for the John G. Shedd Aquarium Gift Shop, Chicago

The Shedd Aquarium and Frederic Schwartz Architects invited us to collaborate on the redesign of the Shedd Aquarium gift shop. An exciting part of the project was working with Judith Bacal, a College of Design classmate who was an exhibit designer at Shedd.

We worked in creating the graphic approach for the shop, which has an underwater theme. Our involvement included determining the color palette for the space and designing the murals and oversized fixturing elements for the store. We created designs for large pink Lucite panels cut to the shape of coral, which glow as if they are under water. Within the bookstore section we selected passages from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Treasure Island and Moby Dick, coupling them with period engravings on large translucent panels to suggest stylized books.

Throughout the store we placed text containing educational and otherwise interesting facts about marine life, which addresses an important part of my personal design approach. I believe that it is not enough to conjure up a pretty design; I think the most successful designs leave an audience coming away with added knowledge or a more informed point of view. In this way this retail environment serves to provide a bit of education.

This assignment allowed me to do some things that are close to my heart: work in collaboration with people I respect and apply our design approach to architectural spaces. In our retail and exhibit work we get a chance to venture beyond the realm of the printed page, and I find this to be very exciting.