Embracing the Fluidity of Design
Christian Esquivel / The Reach Gallery Museum / Graphic Design
The Reach Gallery Museum is a public art gallery and museum located in Abbotsford. They exhibit artwork sourced from multiple artists from all around Canada, and they also serve as an archival repository and houses a significant amount of material, both print and physical media, primarily from the Abbotsford area. They cycle through exhibits on a yearly basis, and have a team of curators and designers that work in tandem to create social media content, design and built the gallery space based on new exhibits coming to the space, and always looking at how they can incorporate these spaces to include the public in a way that is accessibly and educational.
For the duration of my practicum, I worked alongside the curator and the head graphic designer of the Reach Gallery, collaborating as well with the rest of the team to help plan, design and create the new exhibit spaces that were going to occupy the main gallery space and sub-gallery space for summer of this year. I was primarily tasked with helping with developing design solutions for social media, print making and helping to stage out how we can plan out the upcoming exhibits to be successfully integrated into the existing gallery spaces, as well as communicating with the associated artists and curators that were creating the artwork that were being showcased. There were two primary exhibits; Interglacial by Desirée Patterson and ‘What Inspires You?’, a UFV-lead student artwork showcase. Both exhibits had different requirements for how they wanted to be established in the space of the gallery.
The biggest highlight for me, was having the ability to not only apply design through digital design, but being able to experience building an experience, apply that to a real physical space, and cultivate that experience so that the meaning and emotional takeaway of the artwork can be understood by the people that come in to learn, and are left with an impression that lets them think about their experiences at the Reach in a positive and cognitive light.
One of the challenges I faced during my time at the practicum, was to rely on my own critical thinking for problem solving the challenges of what the next step was for the current project. But with that, I gained great insight on how to manage these challenges by creating work plans and timelines to keep myself on track, and how to keep moving forward when I wasn’t able to ask for help, and I am grateful for that.
Overall, I am very grateful and proud of being a part of the team at the Reach Gallery, my time there and working with the team through the summer made me feel part of something meaningful and added positive experiences to the world, and making work that inspires others to think and do the same.
