Origin of the big idea
“There has got to be a better way!” That is the ‘big idea’ behind the creation of the Logic Exhibit System. David Jensen, the inventor of the Logic Exhibit System, began his career in a small local museum, designing exhibits. He quickly learned that large amounts of time, effort and money went into creating new exhibit structures for each new exhibit. Money and effort that could be better spent on community engagement and content development rather than building ‘throw away’ exhibit structures. Even back then, David was concerned about the environmental impact this sort of practice had.
Innovative thinking required
David put his creative mind to work and began developing a flexible, re-usable, reconfigurable exhibit system to meet the needs of his museum. The idea was to create a package of component parts that could be assembled and re-assembled in a variety of ways so that each new exhibit could look different from the last. The wall panels needed to be light enough to be handled but resilient enough to take screws or hanging hardware, the system had to include glass cases to safely display artifacts and the all the parts need to work together seamlessly. On top of that, the system had to be easy to use and maintain in-house and be as environmentally friendly as possible. Not an easy task!
Years of development and consultation
Over the years, as the principal of his own exhibit design firm, he saw that this same challenge of having to constantly build new exhibit structures was faced by many museums, both big and small. David and his staff continued to develop and tweak his original design; the result is the Logic Exhibit System. Logic is a flexible, reusable, reconfigurable system of walls and cases sturdy enough for permanent use, flexible enough to be part of a traveling exhibit (it packs/stores flat!).
It is an exciting time for Logic. We have recently added sliding glass panels for our large cases to our catalogue and are working on some fantastic new components that will make Logic even better.
But the invention of the Logic Exhibit System is only part of David’s ‘big idea’ – stay tuned to learn more.
By Kathy Curry, Logic Exhibit System and D. Jensen & Associates Ltd.