PROJECT UBUNTU / VR MUSEUMS / DELMORE “BUDDY” DAYE LEARNING INSTITUTE
“So Pierre, what do you do for work?” First of all, the field of a Creative Consultant doesn’t exactly boil down to “Graphic Designer”, although that’s the easiest cocktail-party short answer. But marketing is so much more than that.
The Delmore “Buddy” Daye Learning Institute had a radical new project in mind, and it needed a specific type of support. The idea? To create Virtual Reality tours of their museums, and to make Black Nova Scotian history completely accessible to everyone. It’s a big idea, and it’ll take way more than a Graphic Designer to see it through.
Using the Matterport platform, we captured 3 unique sites, for starters—the United Negro Improvement Association in Glace Bay, Africville Heritage Museum in Halifax, and the DBDLI itself. These captures involved conversations with the site’s curators & executives, and we arrived early to tidy up and customize the spaces so they’ll look their very best.
A tour is nothing without a guide, and our plan to leverage Matterport’s “Notes” system went into full effect. For each site, photography was taken and custom Notes were written, drawing attention to each museum’s precious artifacts. We made sure to infuse the humble & informed tone of the DBDLI brand in every word of copy.
We set up a hub page on the DBDLI domain, and created 3 landing pages—one for each site. These pages were custom-made, and are intentionally-designed to tell you everything that you need to know about each place. The Matterport content is accompanied by descriptive copy about the history of the museum and its unique purpose, hours of operation, social media links, and contact info was all written by hand (zero AI involved; not that there’s anything wrong with that 🤷🏻♂️ ). Each page also has 5 “highlights” of what you’ll see in the tour, inviting and hotlinking users to the VR experience itself.
And finally, the purchase and setup of Meta’s Oculus2 VR headgear, including accessory hardware like upgraded headbands & battery packs.
Sometimes my answer is that I’m a Graphic Designer. Sometimes I AM a Graphic Designer. But I’m so grateful for this stellar project from my friends at the DBDLI; it makes “marketing is so much more than that” clearly demonstrable.