I recently completed an 8 month environmental wall project with Mass General Hospital for Children and their Pediatric Hematology-Oncology Unit to commemorate their relationship with the Boston Marathon and John Hancock Life Insurance. The project highlights over 15 years of efforts of raising money for research, events, programs, and supporting the patient and families of children with cancer by participants running in the Marathon. It was an amazing project and incredibility for-filling. I worked with a wonderful team at Mass General and it was great honor to be involved in this project.
The project entailed documenting and celebrating the efforts of the Mass General Marathon Team run by Dr. Howard Weinstein and a tremendous staff of doctors, nurses, child life specialists and volunteers. Money is raised by volunteers who run the Boston Marathon. Each runner is paired up with a child and runs for them. There are several events held throughout the year with the main ones being a Pasta Dinner the night before the race, the Boston Marathon itself and a large gathering at Mile 20 in Newton, MA that the runners stop at and greet the Mass General kids on race day.
In the course of this project we reviewed hundreds of images, news clippings, articles, and 15 years of collected material. I worked with a great team and we ended up developing 8 individual panels that described and highlight the program and all its parts. We worked on this project for about 8 months including dealing with the Boston Marathon bombing in the middle of it. We also had access to a team of 4 photographers including myself that we used to document the Pasta Dinner and the Marathon on race day. My job was to pull it all together and tell the story.
Our hallway walls included an opening statement, a map of the race with photos, the Pasta Dinner, a Financial wall highlighting the programs, a wall of what the kids feel about the Marathon team and all they do, a wall for Mile 20, a press wall and a wall for donors. Throughout all of the walls are over 140 photos of the kids, the race participants, supporters and the events. We even included at Start and Finish line on the floor. The staff use the hallway to test kids skills and the new graphics just add an element of fun.
This project was different than almost any other project I have work on because of the nature of children with cancer and also the tragic events of the Marathon. Being with the Mass General support team at Mile 20 when the bombing occurred is something I will probably never forget and we weren’t anywhere even near the event. Mass General sent over 170 runners to the Marathon in 2013, all came through safely. This project had emotions of joy, sadness and tears mixed together, sometimes at the same time. Something not usually experienced in graphic design projects. I worked with two wonderful and talented women from Mass General, Heather Peach and Caroline Armington along with Dr. Howard Weinstein on this project. It was a complete team effort.
The project was printed and installed by DGI-Invisuals of North Billerica, MA, using an adhesive vinyl wall covering developed by 3M. To learn more about the Mass General Hospital for Children and their programs for dealing with childhood cancer please click here.
