Altoona Historical Society
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Altoona Historical Society
Altoona, Iowa
2019-2020
Community & Historical Preservation -
Art Director
UI/UX Designer
Graphic Designer -
Art Direction
Digital Asset Production
Prototyping & Concept Development
UI/UX Design
Content Management & Production
A small town community gets a generous grant from a social media conglomerate to educate and preserve the history of Altoona, Iowa in this skeuomorphic interactive kiosk media experience.
Approaching Altoona
In the initial concept phase of the project, after defining the information architecture and narrative goals, we focused on developing a visual approach for the interactive experience. We presented a variety of design options, including minimal, timeless aesthetics, edgy asymmetrical motifs, and a heritage-inspired, textural skeuomorphic style. Ultimately, our client felt that the antiquated, historical design best represented Altoona, preserving the town’s rich heritage while offering an engaging experience.
A custom mapping experience.
One of the Altoona Historical Society’s key goals was to highlight the city’s notable landmarks and locales, offering visitors a chance to explore both the past and present. To achieve this, we created a custom vector-based map that allowed points of interest (POIs) to trigger interactive elements, such as high-resolution archival photographs, media from local news outlets, promotional videos, and other historical documents and artifacts. This interactive experience allowed the AHS to proudly share its rich history with both community members and visiting tourists. Additionally this experience allowed the society to add and remove POI’s as time went on to adapt to their needs.
Lifting artifacts from pdfs and text docs.
One of the key challenges of this project was sourcing old historical information and imagery, often found in scanned library books, converted physical artifacts, or outdated PDF documents. This required a meticulous process of acquiring the right tools and assets to upsample and format the media for the kiosk’s new presentation platform—a digital stage.
Given the 4K resolution of the kiosk, which highlighted even the smallest flaws in low-quality images, we took it upon ourselves to preserve, enhance, and clean up these historical artifacts. Our goal was to maintain their original integrity while ensuring they looked stunning on modern technology.
