FHD 2022 Week 1 - 2

Calm and collected start to the year–got the Lincoln Cases done early and even had time to clean the shop! Here are the highlights…

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It’s been a nerve-racking wait, but the glass finally arrived!

We set out to glue all the glass panels immediately.

Jocelyn wrapped up the rest of the finishing. We all appreciated her organizational abilities.

So by the end of the week, we were ready for final loading and the installation trip. Ahead of schedule. Man that felt good.

We started 2022 Week 2 by welcoming our newest team member, Jon!

He jumped right in to help with the final packing before the trip.

And with that, the shop team was able to take a break. We were done a few days ahead of schedule, trucks were loaded, and we took some time to relax and clean up before our installation trip.

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Unfortunately, the current Covid surge hit too close to home just before the trip and required quarantining of a couple of installers we’d hoped would join us for delivery. As with nearly everywhere else, our county has been hit hard with the current wave. I’m just grateful it didn’t affect our core team.

I didn’t get any photos of the installation caravan as they left for Tennessee, but we got everything delivered and inside the main building just before the weather crept in as Week 2 wrapped up.

Design Progress

The design team made great progress during the first couple weeks of the year as well.

Graham pushed the news exhibit graphic design nearly to completion.

Anthony updated the rendered walkthrough with the new graphics.

Rawlings InfoZone Rendered Walkthrough 2021-1-14

Anthony also pushed the Cather concepts forward, with basic space models to show conceptual design elements proposed in the floorplans.

So Jocelyn could get to work on the project budget.

Anthony also designed the Upland team a cool shirt in celebration of the great work from the last year. It’s a bison with a pedestal strapped to its back, kinda like a rocket. I love it. I’m thinking we might start including a shirt with future Upland orders (dumb idea?). We’ve got a couple leftover from the initial order–let me know if you want one and I’ll see what I can do!

Web & Overland Traveling Exhibits

One of the questions sent to me after the last update was essentially “why don’t I feature some of the other work we do outside of custom exhibit design & Upland production?”

It’s a good question (and I love getting all the questions / comments!), so here are a couple updates from work outside of the core exhibit production photos I generally share…

Graham launched a website he’d been working on for Kansas Electric. I think the clean aesthetic is perfect for their brand:

We also started selling our Upland Flat Pack Reader Rails:

These were designed and developed for our Overland Traveling Exhibits and organizations that may want to store their reader rails compactly at certain times throughout the year. Our latest traveling exhibit, Encountering John Brown, features them prominently.

If you’ve got other comments or things you’d like to see me feature in the new year, don’t hesitate to reach out. You can just hit reply on this email and I’ll make it happen.