That big, curved thing over there—that was one of my clients
You don't get much closer to designing for St. Louis, than designing for the Gateway Arch. I was pleasantly surprised that one of Paradigm's newest clients, just a few months after being hired, was (physically) the biggest in the city.
Virtual Reality Theater
The Virtual Reality Theater is the most ambitious update since the remodel of the Gateway Arch completed in 2018, and the only all-new ticketed attraction they've added in decades. Gateway Arch partnered with TimeLooper to create a 3D experience complete with sound effects and visuals from St. Louis' riverfront in the 1850s. It's an experience that transports you back in time as you listen to the story of the riverfront during its busiest days.
I was asked to be the designer and strategist for how to create a space for the Virtual Reality Theater that was both beautiful and functional. I helped plan everything from the design of the wall, the stanchions that created a 'room' within the spacious downstairs lobby of the Arch, and even smaller details like writing the "Your Gateway to the Past" and copy for the wayinding signage, outlining how many seats could fit within the space and providing stool recommendations (unfortunately and ironically, the Tulip Stools designed by the Arch's own designer, Eero Saarinen, were a bit cost prohibitive).
As I went into this project, I held an enormous amount of respect for every designer that has touched the space I was working within. From Eero Saarinen who created the winning design for the Gateway Arch and didn't live long enough to see it completed, to Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates Inc who championed the renovation project that transformed the National Park, to Kiku Obata & Company who created graphics and wayfinding for the newly renovated Arch—I wanted to create something that would make each of them proud. While working through the design, I was particularly excited to look through the guidelines put together by Kiku Obata that outlined the typesetting of wayfinding throughout the interior of the Arch.
After refining several ideas, we landed on my favorite direction. An image of the Arch is built with a halftone effect using rounded triangles rather than circles. The Arch shines in front of a historic illustration of the riverfront rendered in duotone. The forward-facing triangles reference both the passage of time, and the shape of the Arch—in which the entire structure, from the base to the top, is made of an extruded perfect triangle. The stanchions each have wayfinding typography or a still from the 3D experience all set in the Arch's primary deep blue color. Both the illustration, and the stanchion graphics received a more traditional halftone treatment—intending to recede into a clean image from a reasonable distance but up close the halftone replaces what would have been a digital, pixelated texture due to the massive size of each graphic.
The Arch (still) deserves an emoji
In 2020 I was asked to help put together an official proposal to Unicode for a Gateway Arch emoji. The request from the Arch team included showcasing the new west entrance from eye-level, the Arch (of course) and to include the windows that overlook the city.
Each emoji proposal needs a full color, stylized version of the subject as well as a very simple black and white version. When an emoji proposal is approved, the full color version becomes the model that companies like Apple, Google, and Microsoft create in their own style. I chose a style that falls somewhere between the highly detailed, sometimes 3D approach that Apple has and the flatter visuals used by Google. Unfortunately the proposal process was halted during the pandemic, but I'd still love to see this come to life one day.
Campaigns and events
Our primary goal as the Arch's agency of record was to find new ways to promote the Arch and increase attendance for the museum, Tram Ride to the Top, cruises, and the beautiful park surrounding the structure. Below are a few of the many campaigns I worked on.
Where's the Arch?
When asked to promote the Museum at the Gateway Arch, my favorite idea was to turn St. Louis's favorite phrase on it's head. Forget there's the arch, I'm asking "where's the Arch?"
The idea was to promote the Museum at the Gateway Arch by showcasing it as a great destination in St. Louis even if you didn't plan on visiting the Arch. I carefully edited the skyline in some of the most iconic images of St. Louis—the types of photographs that belong on a post card from the city are now hardly recognizable. This execution also played in well to the 'Monument to the Dream' documentary and 'Building the Arch' gallery on display in the museum that both highlight the idea that many people believed the Arch couldn't be built. What if they were right?
Sights Above Stories Below
The Arch chose this as their path for promoting the museum rather than "Where's the Arch?" Sights Above Stories Below was keenly focused on bringing people's attention down from the monument and showing off everything the Museum at the Gateway Arch has to offer.
I played many roles in this campaign, from creating a landing page and social media, to brainstorming copy with Paradigm's writers while visiting the museum multiple times to leave no stone unturned.
At the top of the landing page, as well as on social, we found several ways to share details from the museum in often tongue and cheek way. Whether it was the elephant that walked across the Eads bridge, the role of Seaman on the Lewis and Clark Expedition, or the contest held for the design of the Arch, we found ways to share some humor in it.
The National Park Service Wellness Challenge
Nearly every time we brainstormed ideas to promote the Arch, I championed the incredible greenspaces at Gateway Arch National Park. The way I see it, if each St. Louisan saw the Arch as an equally beautiful place to spend time as others like Forest Park and Tower Grove park, attendance for the Gateway Arch's ticketed events would naturally increase over time.
The Wellness Challenge was the greatest opportunity to really emphasize the 5 miles of paved paths, and 91 acres of greenspace at the Gateway Arch. This project was also bigger than just the Arch, and was being piloted by NPS across all 7 National Parks in Missouri.
Part of the preparations for this event included visiting each of the 7 parks to meet local park rangers and discuss everything the park had to offer so that we could build 9 challenges for each park, fitting into the themes of physical, learning, and mental wellness.
I created several logo options for this campaign focusing on the beautiful outdoors, including a badge-style system where the primary logo would transform into scenery from each park. Also, with this being a program by the National Park Service, I reimagined their iconic arrowhead as the torso of person performing yoga.
Promoting the Blues Cruise
One of the most popular events on the Mississippi is the Gateway Arch's Blues Cruise, where you can enjoy the sites while listening to some of your favorite live, blues music.
Paradigm was asked to help promote it in the form of 'tour posters' that listed the names and dates of each performer for the season. My favorite concept was inspired directly by the instruments being brought on each cruise. I created a playlist of the featured artist as I designed and brought each instrument I heard to life: including the vibrating strings of a guitar, the mesh cover of a microphone, and diagonal lines that reference the pattern of black and white piano keys.
Frights and Heights
In 2019, the Gateway Arch partnered with Paradigm to create a brand new Halloween event. Now, Gateway Arch holds their Frights and Heights event every year to provide a spooky, safe and fun environment for families to gather around the holiday. This new event needed new branding, activity books, motion graphics, and videos to promote it.
While my logos weren't chosen in the end, I had a blast designing different spooky characters. My favorite idea was to put the Arch itself in a costume, and there's no costume more classic than a ghost. Blending logo design with a cartoon style was an exciting challenge and it created my favorite detail—if I can call your attention to the wider, topmost logo—the Arch's little, mathematically-correct Arch-hands.
Branching out into different forms of creativity
I've never been the type to say "that's not for me," when it comes to different areas of design or creativity. I'm always looking to learn more and develop my skills in and outside of my focus. At Paradigm, this led to being the first choice for any motion graphics, and later for any video editing needed.
Motion graphics for the Gateway Arch
I'm proud to say that most of the motion graphics created for the Gateway Arch from 2019–2024 were created by me, this includes their official logo animation.
I created this animation with two goals: honor the builders that risked their lives for the Arch, and add a bit of an explanation to the geometry of the logo, which features the Arch and its shadow. The legs of the Arch reach up from the ground and meets at the center just as it was built, while the shadow fades in as the sun moves from East to West over the Arch.
I've built plenty of smaller animations for the Arch as well, from lower thirds, captions, and bumpers to animations that promote all kinds of different events.
Video Editing
I worked extremely close with Paradigm's videographer when I was hired, and later with each of the freelance teams that Paradigm partnered with. I joined in on many of the video shoots at the Gateway Arch from the Stanley Cup and Fred Bird visiting the Arch to planning and directing shoots for many of the campaigns I helped design for.
I almost never was directly behind the camera but I would often help direct shots, and later I was in position to do nearly all of the video editing for Paradigm's projects.
These samples are just a few out of dozens of videos I've edited and continue to work on as a freelancer for my former agency. I look forward to continuing to edit for the Gateway Arch, especially when it comes to editing interviews with each of the remaining builders that helped shape the Arch—each of their stories is inspiring.
