Joe Rohde, Senior Vice President, Creative Executive, Walt Disney Imagineering
Many of us are engaged in one form or another of story-crafting, whether in two dimensional and virtual media, or in the three dimensional world of built environments, in which I work. Common to all of this is the importance of a good foundational basis for creative expression, through the rigorous application of narrative design principles to all aspects of a project.
I've worked at Walt Disney Imagineering for over twenty-five years, much of that time as a design leader, guiding teams towards the fulfillment of a creative vision. Most of you share a similar challenge – threading a path between the aesthetic and functional aspects of designs.
This presentation focuses on my own practice and experience in creating dimensional stories at Disney's Animal Kingdom at Walt Disney World in Florida where I'm in charge of design. The park deals with the subject of animals and adventure and bids guests to embark on a series of journeys into worlds populated by animals real, prehistoric and imaginary.
Most classic Disney parks offer guests a very particular type of experience: an idealized, fantasy world where Guests escape for a while into a world of narrative order, visual harmony, and physical and emotional delight.
In order to create a theme park where the animals were harmonious with the visual environment, we needed to change the premise of the park itself, because the animals were, of course, disinclined to change their nature. This gave our team of Imagineers an opportunity to deeply examine the underlying basis of the story, to craft a theme which could guide the park into qualities consistent with the animals that would live there. After many sessions of analysis and exploration, we settled on several themes; the universal human love of animals real and imaginary, the power of physical adventure, and the intrinsic value of nature itself.
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