THE IBM/WEATHER CHANNEL MURAL
Atlanta, GA
This is the story of one of a series of mural projects that I have done recently
The design firm was tasked to create all the interiors of a new building that would house IBM’s new venture with the recently acquired Weather Channel
a crop from sketch 2
the focus was to have Ai help institutions and businesses predict weather trends to help them to plan for changes that the weather may bring to their operations
the interior spaces are very modernist, clean and comfortable
they wanted to have imagery that speaks to the contemporary ground breaking research and big data analysis that they provide
the final image dimension is 73’ x 9’
Sketch 1
Sketch 2
Sketch 3
Sketch 1:
I tried to have the feeling of an impending thunderstorm on the left morphing in to clouds of data points, giant raindrops and cloud shapes of information
Sketch 2:
this sketch was more like you are imbedded in the data as the weather system is being analyzed and looking at the icons and data flying around as if you are staring at the night sky
I thought of the feeling of walking through an aquarium with glowing bits of data like small diatoms and swarms of information changing second to second
Sketch 3:
this was the one they chose where shapes and icons signify the areas of interest and perhaps suggest the different sectors of the economy that they want to target
I took standard weather symbols and made them huge
remember the image height is 9’ tall
cropping from sketch 1
cropping from sketch 2
Sketch 3 cropping
the art director thought that the grey of the background and the tiny square data points made the image too busy
I thought that it had a nice energy and would be fun to walk buy in in the more narrow hallway
also they thought the gathered sections of the giant weather icons and abstract shapes were too close together so I changed that
the final image
a cropping from the final
mural in place
all imagery © 2017 John Hersey