Promoting Women in Stem
Working with the Association of Science and Technology Centers (ASTC) on graphics for zoos and aquariums promoting women in STEM was such a fun project for us! It combined so many of the things we love supporting science education, women in STEM, and bringing awareness to the importance of animal conservation.
Our work on this project
• Overall structure with the content team at ASTC, we helped to create the concept and the overall structure of these graphics.
• Content deep dive once we were given the list of scientists being featured, we researched their work to create quick-hitting activities.
• Photo research we sourced images from both the IF/THEN® collection and stock images.
• Print-ready files these graphics will be distributed to zoos and aquariums across the nation to be produced and/or edited by them. This means we needed to create a user-friendly InDesign file so anyone could produce them.
• Title In the attempt to create a placeholder title for these graphics, we used our “It’s a Wild Life as an (insert field here)” title.
The Structure
Zoos and aquariums are very high-energy institutions, with the main attraction being the animals. With that in mind, we wanted to create graphics that weren’t ignored as visitors went from one habitat to the next. With the scientist being the stars of these panels, we thought that reinforcing their work with a quick activity for families would be an engaging way to get their attention. We also used imagery to help catch their eye while walking by.
COntent organization
Original content
Content reserach
Organized content
The Activities
We wanted to create short, easy-to-answer activities for visitors to interact with. These activities relate to the scientists' work but can be answered without reading the content about the scientist above. They act as a teaser for their work and hopefully encourage visitors to learn more about the scientist if they did the activity first.
Additional graphics
These panels are intended to be retractable and easily placed around any zoo or aquarium. They are accompanied by a smaller light-post banner that can also be hung around their institution. The light-post graphics are meant to introduce the female scientist and connect to the larger panels nearby.
