The visitor center to Kenai Fjords National Park in downtown Seward, Alaska provides travelers with their first glimpse of a park that spans over 1,000 square miles and contains the Harding Ice Field, over forty glaciers, an abundance of wildlife, and thousands of years of human culture.

In creating new outdoor wayside exhibits for the visitor center I and my colleagues were tasked not only with introducing these stories to the park’s many new arrivals, but with also conveying the enormous importance of the park and with preparing those visitors for their journey by instilling a sense of reverence and awe for what they are about to encounter.

As the project lead, I worked with park staff to set goals and review deliverables while directing design and content development. I created a collection of illustrations that intepret the park’s, landscape, history, and inhabitants and conceptualized and collaborated on the final graphic approach to create designs that honor many of the conventions of NPS wayside design while introducing fresh, new design elements.

Throughout the project I served as a strong advocate for accessibility and ensured that tactile interpretive elements were incorporated into the the design of each wayside