Students from the graphic design program at Mississippi State University helped graduate students from the landscape architecture program at MSU with a watershed project at the Oktibbeha County Heritage Museum.
Cory Gallo, an assistant professor in landscape architecture, said improving the outdoor area around the museum has been an ongoing task for his students.
“We’ve done several projects there over the last three years. We’ve been slowly redeveloping the entire site to turn it into a demonstration for how to manage storm water for the region,” he said.
Gallo, who teaches a watershed management graduate seminar, said the museum contacted him a few years ago and asked him to help find a solution for storm water that was not draining correctly on the property.
“We’ve actually raised and implemented about $25,000 worth of site improvement over the last few years, including a rain garden,” he said. “This semester, we are building a large rainwater collection system to irrigate with and a new sign for the street.”
He said his students, who will work with the museum for one more year on the projects, created the watershed improvements in a classroom environment with his guidance.
Gallo said his students collaborated with senior graphic design students from Suzanne Powney’s advertising design class this year to make graphic information signs, called kiosk signs, explaining what the site improvements are doing with the watershed.
After hearing about the landscape architecture project, Powney proposed her students create nine kiosks for the museum with the landscape architecture students, she said.
Gallo said his graduate students were responsible for all of the information included on the kiosk signs and the accompanying booklet.
“They researched and wrote the content that is going on the kiosks as well as the booklet that the graphic design students designed,” he said.
Powney said she split her two advertising classes into groups to design the kiosk signs using information provided by the landscape architecture students.
“I had seven teams of students work on proposals they presented to the museum last week. They selected one winner that will be installed after the Thanksgiving holidays,” she said.
Graphic design seniors Ethan Head, Bailey Shoemaker, Clara Thames and Megan Whittington created the winning kiosk sign design.
“Their design was very approachable, colorful and dynamic in that it is raised above the surface as well as set into the surface,” Powney said. “They were the winner in the eyes of the museum and in the eyes of the professors.”
Thames, who designed the illustrations for her team’s kiosks and booklet, said her team worked together to make the information signs easy for visitors to read.
“Each kiosk talks about two or three different areas of the landscaping that they did. We rewrote (the information) so anyone can understand them,” she said.
Thames said she is excited to have her creation brought to life at the museum, instead of an illustration on paper.
“I worked very hard on it, so I’m very happy they are going to use it,” she said.
Powney said she is excited about her students’ role in the landscape architecture work at the museum.
“It’s just a small piece of this large program they have been installing over the past couple of years, and we were very happy to be a part of it,” she said.