Tianchi Ma's prototype Dinosaur rEvolution story card set by Otago Polytechnic

Dinosaur rEvolution

Options for engagement add to the museum exhibition experience.

Otago Museum is the only South Island venue for Australia’s Gondwana Studios spectacular travelling exhibition. From 26 September 2020 to 8 February 2021 visitors can see huge animatronic dinosaurs that move and roar bring these primeval giants to life. Skeletons, skulls, gigantic artwork, and touchable fossil casts, transport you to another world.

Otago Museum's Head of Exhibitions and Creative Services, Craig Scott, worked with two of our Communication Design students to come up with ways the public could engage more with the exhibition, through educational material and social media.

  • Tianchi Ma produced a pop-up photo frame for visitors to put themselves in a prehistoric environment for social media posts.
  • He also designed four different packs of 24 story cards. Children can arrange the pictures on the cards in order to tell a story about the life of a particular type of dinosaur. On the reverse is a puzzle showing that dinosaur's skeleton.
  • A dinosaur height chart allows children to compare their height with dinosaurs.
  • Laura Wellman contributed two designs for a 3m x 1m wall magnetic puzzle - visitors can challenge themselves or each other to place the bones in the right place on the outline.
  • She also designed produced three different pictures of dinosaurs, one for each of the three faces of puzzle blocks that can be spun around to produce any one of three different pictures of dinosaurs.
  • Laura also designed a paper dinosaur that can be cut out and made into a 3D model of a dinosaur after it has been coloured in.
  • A dinosaur egg can be hatched to produce a toy dinosaur.

Laura's dinosaur models were available in the Golden Centre during school holidays to promote the exhibition. Each month a new set of Tianchi's card packs is released as a prize for the first 200 people who complete a gallery trail in the exhibition.