Long-term exhibitions almost always feature an element that got included because it was a hot trend. But is that element part of a long-term trend? Or a short-term one? Hard to know in advance. But dead trends aren’t limited to tech. And no trend is invulnerable. …

Lighting exhibitions of light-sensitive artifacts is hard. We do it wrong. Why it’s hard: For a valuable light-sensitive artifact to draw the eye and look important, it still has to appear as the brightest object, even though almost no light is allowed on it. …

Many tech trends in the museum world disappear as fast as they came. (Come back, spin browser!) But there is one I swore was going to die an early death years ago … and it never did. How did touch tables never die? Upon reflection, there might be good reasons …

What is this thing we call a traveling exhibition? Carol Bossert (Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service / Smithsonian Affiliations) joins host Jonathan Alger (C&G Partners) to reveal the “8 Principles of Traveling Exhibitions”.

MONIQUE: A huge tech revolution is coming to the museum world, you know. PHIL: Maybe. MONIQUE: What do you mean? PHIL: I’m not sure which tech revolution you’re talking about. But in my time, there have been hundreds of tech revolutions …

There are three aging speeds to consider in every exhibition and experience project: Building Speed, Furniture Speed, and Technology Speed. 1. Building Speed: Good buildings age like an elephant. You shouldn’t need to replace one for 50 years …

There are some weird coincidences in our field. Here’s one. Typical projectors (not short-throw) ideally get placed about as far from an image as 1.5 times the width of that image. Guess how far away from an image a person instinctively stands …

There is a counterintuitive audio engineering rule about how to make something louder. It might sound crazy. But it’s true. To dial something up — don’t dial it up. Dial everything else down. This rule is especially true in certain kinds of physical spaces …

Sexy browsing is when an interactive experience is the equivalent of a book, diagram or filing cabinet, but done with appealing technology. You navigate educational image, text or video information. And your reward is more information. It’s good. But it’s not the only option.

Is everything “phygital”? How can a “phygital mindset” lead to better experience design? Exhibition designer and “phygital architect” Alin Tocmacov joins host Jonathan Alger to hash out some key principles, in “8 Ways to Be Phygital”.

My research prep for an appearance on a podcast became ten insights that changed how I think. Here are the last five. — #6. Any new space is immersive. Any time we are “dipped” into new “fluid” we are immersed. New surroundings demand attention.

We all either love "immersive" — or are fed up with it. Or both. The inimitable Charlie Morrow invited me on his podcast, "Immerse!", which is about ... you know. I did some prep research. I found ten ideas that changed how I think about what I do.

Let’s use a projector and make our content huge, on the wall of the lobby! — At night? — No, during the day! — But our lobby is all glass, and we’re in Arizona. — That doesn’t matter! — But our projector can’t compete with the big light bulb in the sky. — What big light bulb?

Mission-driven organizations are rarely in the tech business. But they get saddled with plenty of experiential media tech anyway. One day soon, we all know that sparkly new tech will misbehave. So how can we make our tech-heavy exhibitions less prone to failure?

The starting pistol fires. The 4x100 relay race is on. Each runner runs, then hands a baton to their next teammate. For the team to finish, each runner must finish. If any runner is delayed, that delays the team. If anyone fails with an injury, the team fails. The team is interdependent.

There are two tricks that are so good, they work every time. So good, they work on experts who know the trick. This is one of those. This works even if the budget is low. Even if you just did it last time, or in the same room. Even if the subject doesn’t fit.

Reader C.L. wrote in, asking about that time Phil & Monique tried to outdo each other with increasingly bad ideas for touchscreens. Phil won with “Touch the screen to hear messages from each donor.” The question was, why was that the worst idea?

Our visitors are surrounded by media that is better-funded and better-produced than anything we will ever do. In a fair fight, we lose. Make it unfair. Capitalize on what makes exhibition media unique — it’s exhibition media.

Let’s imagine two exhibition experiences, which I will now invent at random: 1. A giant, 10 foot tall, 20 foot wide, high resolution, interactive media wall. 2. A giant, 10 foot tall, 20 foot wide red chain-link fence.

Visitors don’t already have our historic landscape. They don’t already have our landmark building. They don’t already have our rare collection. But they might already have the same media technology we’re planning if we’re not thoughtful.