My User Experience with Fantastic Beasts

In this article, I will be explaining and reviewing my experience when virtually visiting the Natural History Museum in London. The exhibit I was interested in is Fantastic Beasts: The Wonder of Nature.

During my virtual visit, I saw many different animal displays along with a little bit of Harry Potter lore. I found that there were a few user interaction displays available- of course doing a virtual walkthrough did make things difficult to navigate; even viewing some of the animals and their descriptions was a bit hard to make out. There were often posters on the wall for viewers to read, which often related back to the Harry Potter extended series Fantastic Beasts: and Where to Find Them; which follows Newt, a wizard traveling to America to help save and preserve magical beasts.

Typography

During the exhibit, I observed a pattern of type used throughout posters, signs, and anything else that the user would interact with during their walk. Here is a list of things I found to be prominent:

• Style
• Theme
• Use of Font

The style of a typeface is mindfully chosen to reflect the feeling that the designers want to provoke. When speaking of type, there are many different typefaces one could use. Most popularly, they are divided by being a serif, sans-serif, or script typeface. The type used most commonly in this exhibit was a serif font; with an occasional sans-serif and bolding to show importance and division.

An overarching theme is used to design the aesthetic and mood of the exhibit. You could break this down by color, hue, or even bring this all back around to specific typefaces used. Often there would be quotes displayed on the wall that came from one of the Fantastic Beasts movies, quotes that came from Newt Scamander. These quotes would always be in a serif font.

The use of font is always intentional, it is to grab the viewer's eye and display a certain feeling or setting. Posters displayed around the exhibit also followed a theme. Many times, there would be a poster featuring a beast and a little paragraph about them. These beasts of course come from the Fantastic Beasts series. These specific posters used a combination of serif and sans-serif type as well as bolding type to show hierarchy.

Physical Space

The environment created for a walk-through experience is just as intentional as type. The overarching theme of the exhibit must be shown through the exhibit as much as what is being portrayed. Things that stood out in relation to the physical environment are:

• Decor
• Lighting and Mood
• Use of Color

Designers placed decoration to implement things in relation to the Fantastic Beasts series throughout the exhibit. My personal favorite was using Newt’s outfit and suitcase in a display. Not only is this paying tribute to the film, but also gives the user an idea of the world from which he comes, and the type of environment they are trying to spread throughout the exhibit.

Lighting was used often throughout this exhibit as well. Lighting can be used in an array of ways to implement mood during the walkthrough. Most of the light in the museum is dim, with each display having its own light source to draw attention and show detail to the display.

Color was also an important factor of lighting and setting. There was often a green or blue light put onto a wall to draw attention to what was shown there. Green or blue are main colors used to portray magic and nature. Both of these coincidentally, are the overarching themes of this exhibit. By crossing nature's creations with a magical world, it gives us a sense of adventure and curiosity as we go through the exhibit.

I was drawn to use this specific exhibit because of the use of Fantastic Beasts as an interest point. I among so many other people adore the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, so I think that it was a very good marketing point to harness the magic of that realm and use it to draw attention to our own fantastic beasts. Even if a ‘Muggle’ is not familiar with the series, the designers did an amazing job informing and implementing parts of it to give the user an idea of where they come from using quotes, dragon skulls, outfit displays, and more.

Check out the virtual visit to Fantastic Beasts: The Wonder of Nature here.