When environmental graphic designers are called upon to develop programs for historic sites, they’re required to perform a delicate balancing act. They must authentically, and accurately, depict the institution’s significance, yet tell its tale in a manner accessible to modern audiences.
Louisville, KY-based Rowland Design and Walton, KY-based MurphyCatton Inc. upheld these considerations when it created an environmental graphic program for Charleston, SC’s Slave Mart, the only known building still standing in the United States to have been used as a slave-auction house. Built in 1859, after a Charleston city ordinance had banned open-air slave sales, the Slave Mart was one of several such buildings along Chalmers, State and Queen streets.
Originally known as Ryan’s Mart (named after Thomas Ryan, a Charleston alderman and former county sheriff), the main building comprised one large room with a 20-ft.-tall ceiling that belied the high-arched façade. The property also included a holding cell, a kitchen and a morgue. After slavery’s abolition, the property was converted into tenements in the late 1870s, and it remained so until 1938, when Miriam B. Wilson converted it into an African-American history museum.
In 2006, Charleston’s Office of Cultural Affairs temporarily shuttered the museum to make renovations and impart a stronger graphic identity to offset its dearth of artifacts. Rowland and MurphyCatton submitted to the city of Charleston’s RFP. Mike Herbert, Rowland’s senior designer on the project, said communicating a story through a complex, interwoven system of approximately 1,200 sq. ft. of graphics, images and text through 26 components that vary from interpretive panels to complex storytelling elements. Local historians, regional copywriters, curators and Rowland’s staff cooperatively birthed the storyline’s development.
“Within this relatively small space, we had to communicate the emotional, sociopolitical, cultural and economic forces that impacted Charleston’s slave trade,” he said. “It was important to place a human face upon the stereotypes of the buyer, the trader and the enslaved, because it’s our hope the public finds a greater depth behind the complex story of slavery.”
Though the Slave Mart’s flow resembles standard, content-panel formats and artifacts, and storyline presentation, Herbert said it differs because it features facial photos coupled with detailed text panels, which “draws the visitor into the human experience rather than referring to historical biases.”
Herbert said developing graphic packages for museums differs from corporate or retail environments because of a museum’s innate emphasis upon educational content, whereas these would be merely tolerated, if not considered distracting, within locations that emphasize commerce.
MurphyCatton subcontracted digital printing to Harlan Graphics (Cincinnati), which output the panels on a EFI QS 2000 UV-ink printer on cast-vinyl film. Next, MurphyCatton bonded the prints to MDF. Harlan Graphics also printed UV-ink banners that it suspended through pipes and cables. Mark Catton, one of the firm’s co-principals said, “During the design charrette, a member of the Slave Mart’s board challenged us to give the grandchildren of slaves their history. This project’s content bears a sobering reminder of our past that must always be remembered but never repeated.”