THE JIM HENSON EXHIBITION:
IMAGINATION UNLIMITED

Museum of Pop Culture / 2017-2018

Team / Art Direction + Design: Jeffrey Underwood / Designer: Corey Smith / Exhibit Logo: COLLINS / Video Production: Jonathan Pulley / Photography: Brady Harvey

Deliverables / campaign identity / print + digital promo materials / outdoor billboards / vehicle wraps / print + digital signage / video graphics / display banners

The Jim Henson Exhibition: Imagination Unlimited was the world premiere of a traveling exhibition organized by the Museum of the Moving Image, hosted at MoPOP from May 2017 through February 2018. The exhibition drew over 300,000 visitors during its eight-month run.

Provided only with the exhibition logo and licensed character images, I developed the full campaign concept and visual language. The hero graphic is rooted in the psychedelic and graphic movements of the late 1960s, the era when Henson's career was taking shape. A high-contrast halftone bitmap portrait anchors the composition, nodding to the Push Pin Studios aesthetic of pairing archival imagery with flat, saturated graphic forms. Flowing ribbons of color arc upward and outward in the spirit of Milton Glaser's iconic 1967 Bob Dylan poster, with Kermit, Miss Piggy, Cookie Monster, Gobo Fraggle, and the creatures of Labyrinth inhabiting those plumes as extensions of his imagination. Dots and squiggles woven through the color fields keep the large forms alive and textured.

The visual system extended across billboards, bus wraps, transit signage, banners, and motion graphics. A defining challenge throughout was that the characters represent three distinct rights holders: The Jim Henson Company, Disney, and Sesame Workshop, each with separate image use requirements. Every composition had to satisfy all three simultaneously, with character groupings strategically separated in ways that feel entirely natural within the design.