Local Projects is a New York-based experience design studio. The company creates meaningful and interactive exhibits that connect consumers to brands and important cultural institutions. Their dynamic displays communicate each client’s story, traditions, values, and core message through new, innovative ideas using immersive visual design elements and transformational digital media moments. Through these elements, Local Projects can activate the audience’s emotional core through their senses and take them on a journey never before experienced.
Local Projects Process Oozes with Collaborative Technique
Unlike most studios of its kind, Local Projects intertwines its creative technology and physical design elements from the beginning with the project’s first phase. This fusion causes a compelling amount of innovation within the process that you would not see otherwise. By integrating these elements early on, Local Projects can showcase never-before-seen design moments that its audiences and clients never forget. It combines creative technology and groundbreaking physical design work to create more deeply engaging projects intricately woven into the direct sales funnel for the client. Local Projects work results in increased visitation for public-facing experiences and more awards and earned media than the team can keep up with now.
Partnering with Alexei Orlov and MTM
Recently, Local Projects and Alexei Orlov’s mtm (moments that matter) formed a new partnership as MTM’s acquired the one-of-a-kind experience design studio. MTM and Local Projects have become a force to be reckoned with in the marketing world today through their strategic partnership. With similar ideas on technology and process, this partnership is poised to experience unprecedented growth in the coming years as they corner the experiential design market and take the world by storm.
Technology Tangent with Alexei Orlov
Technology becomes a central factor in many installations designed by Local Projects. Technology is also an essential theme that runs directly through the center of Alexei Orlov’s professional work at MTM. AIEQ is proprietary technology currently being developed by Alexei Orlov and already in use at MTM. The technology increases understanding for all MTM agencies, including Local Projects, across more significant marketing ideas, specifically cultural intelligence and social listening. AIEQ comes from an idea Alexei Orlov birthed at the outset of MTM.
Local Project Design Experiences Garner Acclaim
While Local Projects initiatives consistently find a way to focus on its brand’s target audience, these impressive displays also generate a good deal of publicity across the globe. Forbes, National Public Radio, and Fast Company have covered Local Projects’ events, among many other news outlets.
Is your brand looking for a way to dig down deep and reach out to the heart of your community? Take a look at some of the programs developed by Local Projects recently.
Greenwood Rising
The story of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre has never received the attention it deserved. Local Projects is proud to own a part of this historical revitalization and to ensure this critical moment in American history does not go overlooked moving forward. For 100 years, Oklahoma state officials and government members denied the significance of the events. The Tulsa Race Massacre was swept under the historical rug and simply not considered a teachable or even influential part of American history.
Local Partners partnered with Selser Schaefer Architects to create an exhibition space that tells the story of the Massacre and the fallout, the aftermath, and the story of the way this tragic event affected real people’s lives. Local Project provided the entire concept, exhibit, and experience design elements that gave this project overwhelming emotional resonance for everyone who came and took part in the event.
Planet Word: The World’s First Voice-Activated Museum
A museum dedicated to voice and language results from a concept initiated by philanthropist Ann Friedman. The goal is to turn the Franklin School, a National Historic Landmark, into the world’s first voice-activated language museum.
Local Projects partnered with BBB Architects, Solomon Group, SH Acoustics, Hyersonic, Jeremy Bloom, My Active Driveway, and Zumm Studios to create ten immersive learning galleries. Local Projects completed the interactive voice and language exhibits and oversaw production and media design for the project.
Planet Word was the design experience that won Local Projects the Interaction Award in the Expressing Category. This award represents Local Projects’ very first IDX Award as an agency.
Norton Art+
Local Projects partnered with Line Break Studio to bring Norton Museum of Art, a traditional art museum, onto the digital forefront. The creation of Norton Art+, an augmented-reality app, allows museum guests to more deeply appreciate the featured contemporary artworks in the museum.
Through design, visitors could better understand the visual and process dimensions of the artists’ works. With this deeper understanding, visitors and artists connect. The level of creativity and sense of play they find they allow themselves when interacting through the app genuinely surprises most artists.
Local Projects handled concept and experience design, software development, and media production for this project.
The March
One of the most rewarding parts of working at Local Projects is informing and educating on historically valuable and iconic events. Through the creation of dynamic displays, it was the goal of The March to help visitors develop a better understanding of history and to rethink antiquated ideas they may carry.
Time Studios elected Local Projects to play an intricate part in the development of The March. This project would be an extraordinary collaboration between Time Studios and The Estate of Martin Luther King Jr. Local Project designed a virtual reality experience allowing visitors to be part of the historic “I Have a Dream” speech given by Dr. King.
The March weaves through a series of modular zones that reconfigure their shape and size to fit different museum exhibit spaces. The insignificant, shadowed environments created before and after the VR area give guests context and restore their audiovisual capabilities to make their reality-inducing immersive VR experience a bit less jarring and far more impactful.
Local Projects stepped up to the plate to take on this massive cultural responsibility. The team developed a sequence that provided historical context for visitors and a moment to decompress afterward. Finally, Local Projects took the experience one step further and incorporated a message guiding interested visitors toward further activism.
In addition to Time Studios, Local Projects worked with RYOT, V.A.L.I.S. studio, Digital Domain, CAA, and JuVee Productions to create this historically truthful virtual reality exhibit. Local Projects handled concept, experience, and presentation design as well as design documentation.
Those That Create the Magic
Local Projects is a multidisciplinary crew of design professionals, producers, animators, creative technologists, content strategists, and physical designers, all under one roof. Local Projects is led by Founder and Principal Jake Barton, managed by Managing Director Whitney Rutter, operates at the hands of Chief Operating Officer Sam Wellbrock, and gets creative through the ideas of Creative Director and Director of Creative Technology Eric Mika.
Suppose you or someone you know are looking for a way to bring history to life or activate their brand through a living experience? Get in touch with Local Projects. As an mtm-acquired agency, count on Alexei Orlov and his skilled staff to work alongside the creative leadership at Local Projects. Together, they dig deep into the historical foundations of a cultural project or find a way to the core of a brand’s message to build a project that brings its significance front and center without sacrificing accuracy or authenticity.
Find out more about Local Projects by visiting the website localprojects.com
About Alexei Orlov
With experience spanning 30 years, 40 countries, and 50 brands, Alexei Orlov has made life his business and business his life as a seasoned leader in Global Marketing. Alexei’s passionate and dynamic leadership has been a driving force throughout his career, a proven specialist in global brand strategy, marketing deployment, and operational change management.
Alexei Orlov is the Founder and Global CEO of MTM choice, a boutique network of skilled practitioners specializing in high-precision brand activation and media optimization. Bolstered by market-enabling technologies, MTM agencies seek to help brands excel at the “moments that matter” for their customers and consumers.
