Stories of regular men who answered the call, told through their equipment
AVERAGE JOEMUSEUM
Explore original WWI, WWII, and Korean War artifacts and research connecting each piece to a veteran
What is Average Joe?
Average Joe Museum is my own brand developed to commemorate American veterans whose items I have come across in my many years of collecting. My online museum focuses on veterans from 1914 - 1953, more importantly, just regular old guys who came from all walks of life. Given the era of focus, I opted to use Futura combined with my own original Art Deco style logotype to establish memorable brand identity The main hurdle was to establish a strong identity without playing into an on the nose and cliche brand identity.
The Logo
I am an enthusiast of dense and strong letterforms. I elected to create a geometric and Art Deco inspired logotype, seeing as Art Deco falls in the era these men were growing up. I wanted to make a logo that reflected my own identity for my museum - something that would reflect the nature of average men serving in the military. The “E” in JOE resembles a stylized cigarette being pulled from a cigarette box - something that just about every veteran of the early to mid 1900’s can associate with.
Interface
The interface is quite simple. The user can access the Museum page via the nav bar or using the “Explore the Collection Here” button. Upon reaching the museum page, the museum is split into three categories - Europe, Pacific, and the Korean War, where upon clicking on each button, they are directed to the respective theater of war. The theater pages are organized into a simple three row grid that scales to a two and one row grid per screen dimension. Each module contains the item(s) of a veteran, their name, unit, and icon of that unit’s insignia.
SIEGFRIED R. HAMISCH
PIRNA, GERMANY 1921–2005
- Branch of service
- United States Army
- Primary military occupation
- Intelligence Officer, Linguist
- Highest rank achieved
- Captain
- Dates of service
- March 1942 – 1950s
- Wartime unit
- Headquarters Company, 1st Battalion, 116th Infantry Regiment, 29th Infantry Division
- Campaign awards
- Normandy, Northern France, Rhineland, Central Europe
The Why, Continued
Each veteran has a gallery to showcase the photos of their former equipment. The gallery features captions relevant to the equipment, highlighting certain details, and the museum feel of the gallery is further enhanced via an archival tab that appears at the top left of every photo and the JOE watermark.
Challenges
One of the more challenging parts of this endeavor was to photograph every object (there are over 300 photos) and edit them for presentation and web use. I used Photoshop’s recorded actions to rapidly retouch images to have transparent or white backgrounds, along with scaling images for web optimization, only modifying images on an as-needed basis. There have been many more to list, however, I feel the most necessary information to share is that this time-consuming hurdle was conquered.
