UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON
OMA&D EXHIBITION

Studio Matthews / 2019

Team / Art Direction: Kristine Matthews + Matt Cole / Design + Production: Jeffrey Underwood / Student Designers: Christen Miyasato, Monica Niehaus, Angela Piccolo, Samantha Spaeth, Dana Golan, Eva Grate + Jazmine Hoyle / Photography: Ben Benschneider

Deliverables / exhibit graphics / infographic displays / production + fabrication deliverables

Recognition / Communication Arts 2019 Design Annual, Award of Excellence / GRAY Awards 2019, Finalist / UCDA Annual Design Awards 2019, Gold Award / UCDA Annual Design Awards 2019, Excellence Award

The University of Washington’s Office of Minority Affairs & Diversity (OMA&D) was established in 1968 following a historic student-led movement that called for greater diversity among the university’s students, faculty, and staff. To commemorate its 50th anniversary, OMA&D partnered with Studio Matthews to create an exhibition celebrating the organization’s history, impact, and ongoing mission.

As part of the design process, Studio Matthews integrated the project into an advanced University of Washington exhibition design course, inviting students, faculty, and OMA&D representatives into a collaborative development process. Student teams created exhibition concepts that were refined through critique and ultimately synthesized into a final direction developed by Studio Matthews.

Joining the project at the conclusion of the concept phase, I helped transform the strongest ideas from multiple student design teams into a unified exhibition identity and visual system. My role included establishing the typography, color palette, imagery treatments, infographic language, and graphic standards that carried throughout the experience, creating cohesion across a wide range of content and display formats. I also developed the exhibition’s interpretive and statistical displays while producing detailed fabrication-ready documentation to ensure the design could be realized accurately at full scale. The result was a cohesive and award-winning exhibition that translated diverse conceptual inputs into a clear and compelling visitor experience.