Tech-no Notice

So today I was with a previous client chatting about their plans for their next temporary exhibition. It will feature original manuscripts and leaflets from 1917 and some of them are amazing. Graphically, visually and historically.

They had also recently been approached by a company offering “transparent interactive display cases”, and he asked “should we use them?”. I simply responded with “Why?”. He thought about it for a second and then immediately chuckled and said “yes, why would we cover up the items”.  And he was right, why would we hide amazing original tangible materials behind a digital interface once you touched it?

This brief interaction summed up what we do at Thought Different. We’ve been looking at interactive transparent screens for years. We’ve only proposed using them once. Not because of cost (they are expensive) or because we had to dazzle a client with the latest “cool sh@*”; it was because it was appropriate.

Take an ordinary object that has a story to tell. An object that we see every day but with further context will make people think. The object itself isn’t interesting. That’s what will draw people to it. They want to know “why” it’s interesting. From that moment, you have them, and can tell the story you want them to walk away with.

Tech is great and it’s evolving everyday. Finding the right use for it, however, that’s the tricky part.