ACWM Year Pillar Systems

Dive deeper into key stories of the civil war.

The Year Pillars function as an integral system within the American Civil War Museum, marking each year of the war and section within the exhibit. Each Year Pillar structure includes casework and artifacts, belt graphics, and an interactive media experience, which features compelling personal stories and highlights key moments in the arc of the conflict.

The industrial belts connect to the interactive media screen and display the year and headline, along with a subtle collage with representational personal figures, press, and images of events. The belts and the belt material evoke industrial belts of the 19th century, and criss-cross the gallery overhead to create a unifying kinetic expression.

The Year Pillar digital interactive provides an engaging 'deed-dive’ educational content for each year of the civil war. Each interactive contains:

• Color-coded interactive map

• 20 events

• 5 featured stories

• 10 Personal narratives

• 100+ featured artifacts

The interactive is divided into four levels: attract screen, map (home) screen, featured story screen, and artifact screen. Below is a description of the user experience flow.

The attract screen of each Year Pillar Interactive features bold typography and filmic montages of historic figures and events, inviting the user to engage further. Upon activation, the user is brought to a color-coded map of the United States and a counter displaying the current division between the Confederate and Union parties.

From the map (home) screen, users can navigate either by touching the small touch-points on the map or the list of events on the right column. When touched, the map pans and zooms into the selected area and reveal a pop-up window with a summary of the event.

When the user touches the featured events (highlighted in yellow), they are brought to a continuous swipe screen where they could navigate through personal stories, historic photography, quotes, and related artifacts. The screens were designed with parallax motion and layered content.

Within each ‘featured event’ screen, the user can touch any artifact to open the artifact screen, where they can zoom in (500 times) on a digitized high-res image of the artifact and learn more about its story. The artifact screen allows visitors to engage with historic artifacts, that are usually seen behind glass, in a more intimate and personal way.