Project Arts & Ideas creates the interpretive voice in exhibits, visitor centers, outdoor exhibits. Since 1997, we have guided projects from the client’s core goals through planning, development, design, writing and production management to the exciting moment that the exhibit’s voice is heard.

Within the variety of our exhibit projects are common threads of success – spatial and visual themes inspired by a broad range of references; designs that understand the needs and responses of visitors; strong spatial and visual formats that create continuity and identity; command of both verbal and non-verbal communication; creative sense of architecture and scale.

There is a connection between a good process and a good product. Project Arts & Ideas values the creative process in collaborative efforts that give form to ideas.

Joseph Hines, Principal brings varied experience of applied arts to interpretive exhibitry. Before graduate studies in communication design at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, he worked in archeology in North and South America, in field excavations and as illustrator, photographer and filmmaker. In Chicago, he produced his first exhibit project for the Center for American Archeology, and as a graduate thesis project he designed a 10-acre interpretive nature center amidst the canals west of the city.

On-staff in museums in Illinois and Alabama, he created exhibit presentations of precious collections and ideas, later designing “Clockwork” and the centerpiece “Henry’s Story” exhibition at The Henry Ford (formerly Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village) in Dearborn, Michigan.

In 1997 he founded his design firm, Project Arts & Ideas.