You’ve probably heard this before: A picture will look just fine while you’re taking measurements but will feel ridiculously elevated once you put the measuring tape away. Or: A label is right underneath the object while you’re standing there looking at it but is impossible to read once a member of the public takes over the position and requires the people behind them to crane their necks around them.
In other words: display height isn’t just a dimension on a wall elevation, it’s an issue of comfort and attention, as well as visibility and how exhibitions connect to each other.
Instead of thinking about each object, work out the position of the visitor looking at it. A tiny photo has to be much closer than a large wall graphic. If an object is viewed in a case, you’re looking at it from above, while a sculpture on a plinth needs to be viewed from different sides. What is the “center” of interest in an exhibit? How close will someone see the exhibit? Will the exhibit contain lots of detail, where it would need to be closer to the viewer in order to be understood? Consider these things. Two things of equal overall size may require very different heights if what’s important about them is at different locations.
Sightlines also are critical to your display’s design. A sightline is something you can see from a certain place in the room. What can you see from where you enter the exhibit or hallway? Make sure that a tall piece of furniture or a case doesn’t accidentally obscure the main point of the exhibit, and that the path through the exhibit does not get blocked. What can you see from the side doors or corners or other places visitors are likely to stop? Strong sightlines will reveal a vital image at the appropriate moment, direct the visitors to other parts of the exhibit, and help to create links between related areas, all without depending on wayfinding.
Try drawing out a simple wall elevation before you install any of the objects. Mark out where an adult’s eye, a seated person’s eye, and a child’s eye would be at that wall. Add little pieces of paper representing objects and labels and then move them around until you’ve got a display that can be viewed without too much vertical movement of the eyes. This isn’t about finding one display height suitable for everyone (you can never do that!) but you might realize, for instance, that all of your information is crowded into a display height that doesn’t really allow for seated visitors.
Labels should be tested in this manner, too. If you stick up a label too low, viewers are going to get down on one knee in order to read it, and that’s just wrong. You may want to place labels on one side of the piece, but make sure that they don’t get mixed up with adjacent pieces. If you write long labels, this also may cause the reader to stop and stay in one location for long enough to disrupt the traffic flow. Print your text at its intended size and test it out at the correct height, from a distance similar to where the text is meant to be read. Look at the size of the fonts, the length of the lines, the contrast and lighting, and the potential for someone else to walk between the viewer and the wall while they’re reading.
When you have objects clustered together, don’t make them look like they are all attached to the same invisible horizontal line. If every frame top edge is the same height, the overall rhythm is going to feel very regular and may look contrived. And especially if the frames are going to be different sizes, it’s not going to matter if you align the centers or bottom edges of some of the frames, or an important feature within the frames. Leave enough space in between the groups of objects in a section in order to signal to visitors that they are dealing with two different areas of the display, and align some important features of objects to labels in order to help the viewer take it all in more easily. Note down the display height you choose, on the elevation, so that you don’t have to rely on memory as you’re installing the objects.
Do a final walk-through, just as if you were a visitor to the display at your leisure. Take a normal step-and-stop pace. Look at what’s in the room as it falls into your field of vision, without looking deliberately. Can you find where the next thing is? Can you see the labels? Is something hidden behind the plinth? Could seated and standing viewers find meaningful material in a range of heights that was reasonable for them? All of these questions give you a better sense of the exhibit design than any specific height. You have to see how the design works for human bodies moving through space, rather than just as an abstract image on paper.