Urania x Muze: Space as a narrative medium – Exhibition graphics

Urania x Muze: Space as a narrative medium – Exhibition graphics

Jona Piehl – Workshop: Dreaming of Exhibition Graphics…
Monday, 10.11.2025. at 12.00
School of Design, Frankopanska 12

Jona Piehl – Lecture: Let’s Talk About Exhibition Graphics 
Tuesday, 11.11.2025. at 17.30
Urania – space of creation, Trg Eugena Kvaternika 3/3

As part of the public event series Space as a Narrative Medium, the third thematic session focuses on exhibition graphics. The workshop and lecture will be led by Prof. Dr. Jona Piehl — a graphic designer, researcher, and educator whose work lies at the intersection of design, museology, and narrative theory. Her practice explores the processes and methodologies of visual storytelling, examining how graphic design shapes the visitor’s experience and mediates meaning within exhibition spaces.

As a designer, Jona Piehl has participated in numerous exhibition projects in Germany and the United Kingdom, and she currently works as a Professor of Communication Design at the Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft (HTW) in Berlin. Through her practice, she seeks to foster critical reflection on the role of visual elements in exhibitions and museums.

Workshop – Dreaming of Exhibition Graphics…
The specialized workshop led by Jona Piehl is designed for museologists, curators, designers, and architects who wish to refine and expand their understanding and practice of exhibition graphics.

The workshop will focus on object labels. Using examples from different museums, participants will explore how new exhibition graphics might look if they were designed to enhance the visitor’s experience of the exhibition. After identifying each museum’s identity and its potential appeal to various visitor groups, participants will develop new formats of graphic narrative interpretation that highlight what makes each museum unique and offer visitors engaging and meaningful experiences — possibly even without labels at all.

The workshop will be held in English, and registration is required.
You can register via the link until November 4, and all applicants will be notified about the outcome of their application on November 5.

Lecture – Let’s Talk About Exhibition Graphics
Through a range of practical examples, Jona Piehl’s lecture will encourage reflection on the visual elements of exhibitions and museums. Whether talking about object labels or large wall graphics, every exhibition graphic can be viewed from multiple perspectives – these visual elements can be discussed in terms of their aesthetic and functionality, their purpose in relation to the exhibition narrative, the museum space and the institutional identity, or the ways in which they guide us through content.

Exhibition graphics shape the visitor’s experience of the exhibition narrative – they are the link between content and audience. For this reason, they should be discussed more often and approached with greater critical awareness. The lecture will encourage a conversation about exhibition graphics through the following questions:

• What exactly does the term “exhibition graphics” mean? What happens if exhibition graphics are labelled as “text panels” or, even more generic, as “signs”?
• What do terms such as “object label” imply in terms of content and design?
• How can we have meaningful conversations about what kind of graphics we actually need and want in future exhibitions?

Different perspectives on what exhibition graphics are and how they function carry certain expectations about their purpose and appearance — expectations that are not always aligned. These differences, however, create opportunities for reflection, critical observation, exchange of ideas, and the development of new and alternative formats. Ultimately, this raises the question of whether object labels are still necessary at all — and if not, how could the same information be communicated in other, more meaningful ways?

The lecture will be followed by a moderated discussion with the lecturer and the audience, led by Ms Dragana Lucija Ratković Aydemir (Muze d.o.o./Muses Ltd).

The workshop will be held in English, and registration is required.
You can register via the link.

More about the lecturer
Jona Piehl is an educator, graphic designer and design researcher. She studied visual communication and illustration in Hamburg and Edinburgh and holds a PhD from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, London. As a designer, she has worked on numerous exhibition projects in Germany and the UK, working with design consultancies Land Design Studio, London, and Ralph Appelbaum Associates, Berlin, for clients such as the Victoria and Albert Museum or the Natural History Museum, London. Most recently she co-curated and co-designed the exhibition “Flachware und Papiertorten” at the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg.

In her research, situated at the intersection of design, museum studies and narrative theory, she explores processes and methods of visual storytelling, in particular in the context of narrative environments such as museums and exhibitions. Her monograph ‘Graphic Design in Museum Exhibitions: Display, Identity and Narrative’ was published by Routledge in 2021.

Since 2020, Jona is a professor of communication design at the Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft HTW Berlin where she teaches both on the BA Communication Design and the MA Public Design, with an emphasis on information design, visual storytelling and spatial communication.

Space as s Narrative Medium
Throughout 2025, the creative team of Muze/Muses celebrates its 20th anniversary with the program “Space as a Narrative Medium” – a series of public events exploring new, experimental, and research-based approaches to designing permanent exhibitions within an international cultural context. The program is realized with the financial support of the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia and the Goethe-Institut Kroatien, and in partnership with Urania – a space for creation (for lectures) and the School of Design (for workshops).

Design of the visuals: Karla Jaranović, School of Design