This wall sculpture was actually part of a much bigger environmental design installation, but the executive area was an opportunity to do something a bit different to make people stop and look. We wanted people to walk into this space and say "Wow" and to have an immediate understanding of the global impact of the Animal Health division and the diversity of the species supported.
The message is very simple: Global Animal Health. However, the execution is a bit abstract, and the process to get to this solution was iterative and consisted of sketches, shopping at a toy store, and multiple prototypes until we got the materials right.
The original artwork was accompanied by beautiful brushed metal typography with a message supporting the mission of the Animal Health division.
The Process
It started with very simple sketches on a whiteboard. After sketching multiple bad ideas, a good idea finally came to me. The concept was to create some depth and find a way to arrange plastic animals on a wall and have them displayed in the shape of a world map. As I started sketching and thinking through the idea, I realized there wasn't a good way to pitch it without making a rough prototype to communicate the direction of the concept.
First things first, off to a toy store to procure some animals. After buying a hand full of animals, I went out to my garage and painted them neutral colors, found a nice piece of scrap wood - and painted that too, and then got myself some nuts and bolts and started drilling holes and fabricating. The end result was a rough prototype that communicated the idea and was just enough to sell the concept to the president.
With the idea sold, now I was at a point where I needed to find a way to fabricate this piece of art out of proper materials and bring it up to scale. I just so happened to have met a guy that worked at a design and fabrication company that specialized in signage and fixtures, and had the equipment and expert craftsman to pull this off. Next step, recreate the prototype and test materials.
The first prototype was beautiful, but the materials were so heavy they would have pulled the wall down when installed on it. So we played around with materials, went from metals to plexiglass, changed up our color palette, and had a solid plan to build this thing.
We refined our animal placement plan after consulting with the Animal Health experts, and printed the solution out to scale on a large format printer. Refinements followed.
At this point, we placed the largest plastic animal order ever on Amazon. I can only imagine what the people were thinking who packed all of this up in the fulfillment center and shipped it off. And of course, all the animals needed to be painted and properly drilled for mounting.
The planning for the fabrication was meticulous and my team and I provided very detailed instructions for the craftsman to follow. Animals were placed on the blueprints and marked for proper drilling, while sheets of plexiglass were cut into continent shapes and aligned to the drill holes.
Paint was applied to the plexiglass continent shapes, backing boards were cut to shape and painted, and the process of animal placement started. It was like putting a puzzle together. The entire shop was busing working!
The big install was next. We did this over a weekend as we didn't want to disrupt the executive area during normal working hours. It all started to come together.
The end result was an award winning, original piece of art, recognized both internationally and domestically by organizations such as Hermes, the Art Director's Club, Graphic Design USA, Communicator Awards, Creativity International Awards, and more!
Most importantly, the president was happy with the unique solution we installed that successfully communicated the essence of his division and the purpose for their work.
