The Typography of Disney's Animal Kingdom Part 1: Africa

July 26, 2025 by Dave Gottwald

Dr. Benjamin George and I have turned in our draft manuscript for Disney and the Theming of the Contemporary Zoo: Kingdoms of Artifice to our editor at Rowman & Littlefield, now part of Bloomsbury, for their new Studies in Disney and Culture line.

Kingdoms of Artifice is a product of personal interviews with over three dozen zoo designers and professionals, landscape architects, and former Disney Imagineers. In addition to visiting Disney’s Animal Kingdom and ten other Disney theme parks, we also traveled to nearly 50 zoos worldwide to conduct first-hand site analysis.

To celebrate, I thought I’d take a close look at the typography of Disney’s Animal Kingdom (1998) which is at the heart of our narrative. Zoos, like museums and other cultural institutions, contain many text displays. As a result, Animal Kingdom feature more typography than other Disney theme park I have visited—over 3,200 individual pieces of signage and ephemera.

Harambe—Swahili for Working Together or Coming Together—is a fictional place largely inspired by the island town of Lamu off the coast of Kenya, but the designers deliberately avoided copying any one street or marketplace, insteading creating a pastiched montage of the many places they visited, drew, and photographed during their East African research.

Harambe is teeming with exemplary graphic design from Walt Disney Imagineering (WDI). The Imagineering in a Box videos on WDI’s YouTube channel provide information about many Disney design techniques, and were produced to prepare students for the company’s design competitions and internship programs. Joe Rohde, who was creative lead on the Animal Kingdom project, is interviewed in several clips, often showing examples from that park.

Lesson 1.7 in the series is the only source we have found in which Disney park graphics are parsed by specific function. Rohde likens these categories, or levels of graphic design, to three flavors:

The first is the base level, ghost graphics. These function as visual props, part of the set design of a themed space. One example would be leftover signage from prior proprietors, adding a feeling of age, or signs that are still in use but clearly from an earlier era.

Or old advertisements and broadsides that don’t convey anything except a sense of place. Rohde reminds that ghost graphics operate on a subliminal level. Guests “don’t need to read them, they don’t need to be legible, [guests] don’t actually need to ever look at them.” They are there to be seen and felt as backdrop.

Second is a level that is “inside the story” and helps guests to “understand the story.” Story graphics could be the names of actual shops and restaurants on signs, plus all ephemera related to the backstory of those spaces told through posters or letters, and also branding and labeling on fictional products like a barrel of gunpowder or a bag of coffee.

Rohde says guests are “supposed to read them,” but they are not essential. Story graphics are still “show elements,” but can add richness to the guest experience, unlike ghost graphics, which can be safely ignored. When such themed story graphics contain educational content at a zoo, we refer to them as embedded didactics.

Lastly are those signs and notices which are operational graphics. They provide legal and safety information, important warnings, or information needed to complete a task, like a wait time or a menu board. This category also includes any wayfinding, like exit signs or public restroom icons, and directions from one area to another.

These graphics are often themed to their environments like the other two, but at this level—the most relevant, essential, in fact—their legibility is paramount above any stylistic flourish. Rohde emphasizes that “the range of design control over them is more limited.” These graphics are “a category of communication I am supposed to read, I have to read,” and thus their expressiveness is “usually more restrained.”

Rohde instructs that for a themed space to be successful, guests must never “become aware of the artificial difference” between the levels. All three types of graphic design need to work together in balance and harmony with one another to present a seamless visual experience.

This means every aspect, from language(s), typeface choices, shape language, mark making, illustration style, and color palette through to substrate and application.

What makes Disney graphic design distinctive is—being a theatrical company, as Rohde likes to say—the Imagineers play with all the levels, whereas traditional architects are largely only concerned with the third type, if they have any role to play in a project’s signage at all. As with most forms of design, graphics and signs are really only noticed when executed poorly. With Joe Rohde’s creative direction, at Animal Kingdom the overall graphic design is exceptional, perhaps the very best to be found at Walt Disney World.

Ghost Graphics

Harambe is covered with ghost graphics. Some are advertisements for local businesses, others are announcements for upcoming events. These have been applied to walls with a kind of faux wheat pasting and then sealed under clear coat, all of their rips, tears, and wrinkles preserved.

The layering and distressing is all part of the effect. Even though many of the posters are torn and illegible, they contribute, as do other props, to what Imagineering Legend John Hench calls eyewash—small details that add to overall gestalt of a themed space.

Many of these graphics employ a particular vernacular, that of amateurish or DIY designs. The typographic choices are often intentionally poor, and the illustrations and photography badly executed on purpose. I’ve created pieces like this before, and it’s kind of fun to “do it all wrong.” This extends to the copywriting: Camping doesn’t mean “cheap” - it means “value.”

In typical Disney fashion, there are moments of humor and irony. A notice boldly says posting advertisements is prohibited, and just below it are various ads.

Some ghost graphics also carry subtle story moments. The original plot for the Kilimanjaro Safaris attraction concerned illegal poaching. In 1998, the driver would have began the tour by telling us that the Harambe Wildlife Reserve was established in 1971, but “unfortunately the poachers still go after our elephants.”

Guests would learn on their journey that a mother elephant had been captured along with its baby, and were tasked with helping in a rescue. For various reasons, this storyline was toned down and eventually removed completely from the safari. But the broadside notices warning of poachers are still plastered about the walls of Harambe.

Story Graphics

The most common kind of story graphics within the Disney parks are the names of fictional businesses that serve as fronts for the various food, beverage, and souvenir stands. In Harambe, they feature playful typography and appear to be hand-painted by locals. There are often real world “mistakes” that give these signs more personality. At the Tamu Tamu refreshment stand, Ice Cream and Hot Drinks apparently used to be sold, but no longer.

Story graphics are also seen on attractions, and are designed to blend in with the environment and appear real-world. Here on the Kilimanjaro Safaris guests are supposed to be riding through the fictional Harambe Wildlife Reserve. The sign is routed in wood with an appropriate typeface and suitably aged, as if it has been sitting in the sun for decades.

This includes the branding of attraction vehicles. Although regrettably employing a hand-painted variant of the very overused Copperplate Gothic, the Eastern Star line is loosely based on the actual Eastern African Railway system which crosses Kenya and Tanzania. The cities listed on the locomotive are all true to the region—Lusaka (capital of Zambia), Nairobi (capital of Kenya), and Kisangani (eastern city in the Democratic Republic of the Congo).

Copperplate Gothic is also used at the main entrance to Animal Kingdom, so there is a logical connection here.

Some story graphics could almost be placed at the ghost level. Yet this hand-painted notice provides a key story detail—when Harambe was actually being finished up by the Imagineers in the fall of 1997.

Themed applications also extend to the Disney parks’ usual sponsors, in this case Quilted Northern Tissue paper. As the typography here is based on offerings from Letterhead Fonts, also increasingly featured at Disneyland and Disney California Adventure in recent years, it appears this graphic was added well after Animal Kingdom’s opening year.

Operational Graphics

Wayfinding is perhaps the most common form of operational graphic. Where do I want to go, and how do I get there? These signs must be extremely legible, yet still reside in-story in terms of the typeface choices, substrates, and applications. These metal fins look plain enough, but looking closely you can see rust stains and typesetting that is intentionally a tad on the sloppy side.

The faces here are a mix of bold gothic sans serif and Carol Twombly’s Lithos (1989), based on Ancient Greek lettering. If there are two cliches which recur at zoos everywhere, they are Neuland (1923), a German wood typeface designed by Rudolf Koch, and Lithos. Neuland has been used for exotic, particularly African, vibes since the 1940s. Its inline variant was made famous by the 1993 film Jurassic Park, and ever since Neuland has been used liberally by zoos to mean Jungle, Africa, and Exotic.

Lithos has no such lineage, but to the untrained eye it looks similar enough to substitute for the older German lettering. You are sure to recognize them both at your next zoo visit.

Operational graphics are also incorporated into attraction signage. Though it could be considered a story graphic, this sign also says where the train is going to. It also breaks the story world by explicitly mentioning Disney’s Animal Kingdom, taking guests—for practical purposes—out of Harambe in East Africa and reminding them they are in a theme park.

Graphics design plays an essential role in immersing guests in Harambe. Hand-painted typography is everywhere in Kenyan English. Careful attention has also been paid to add lettering rendered in Swahili—also called Kiswahili—the Bantu language widely spoken in the eastern regions of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Mozambique, parts of Somalia, and Tanzania.

Swahili was chosen by the design team specifically because it crosses all these geographic boundaries. Notice that the British convention Way Out is used rather than exit, staying true to Kenya’s colonial past.

All the graphics in Harambe include the work of Imagineering writer Kevin Brown. On his travels through Africa, Brown collected every matter of print ephemera he could find—newspapers, pamphlets, posters, signs, and stickers—to learn the subtleties of Kenyan English with its “tweaked, third-world Victorian” grammar and worked closely with a Los Angeles university translator, Sara Mirza, to craft the appropriate Swahili / English pairings.

British spelling is used on all English applications, as in Behaviour here. This story graphic is blended with an operational notice. The Harambe Conservation Code is fictional, yet it is true that on the safari attraction the animals do indeed have the right of way, which sometimes causes delays on the journey.

Similarly, this genuine list of rules is presented completely in-story. This is one of the nicest examples of hand-painted lettering which is imperfectly organic yet perfectly legible.

Sometimes a sign simply needs a title and a big red arrow. Again, the lettering is imperfect yet bold and clear. This could have been set in a typeface digitally, but the effect would not be the same. This is what sets Disney apart from so many other theme parks.

Only at Animal Kingdom could you find a sign in Africa showing you the way to Asia. And that is where I will be heading next.

Continued in Part 2.

Kingdoms of Artifice - Part 3: Woodland Park Zoo, Day Two.

April 30, 2025 by Dave Gottwald

For my second day at Woodland Park Zoo, I was able to focus on the more recent, more heavily-themed portions which have been added since the landscape immersion movement took off.

Tropical Rain Forest

According to the zoo, “this bioclimatic zone…reflects the complexity and diversity of a tropical rain forest through mixed species exhibits.” The exhibits here were installed between the late 1980s and 2003, designed by The Portico Group, now part of Moore Iacofano Goltsman. Based on the level of theming, it’s fairly easy to guess the age of each exhibit.

At the entrance we find a graphic panel similar to those I found at the zoo’s other zones, with a map showing the regions represented, from South America and Central Africa to India and Southeast Asia.

The panel is framed with found wood posts and rope ties to again suggest it was made by the local population.

The Tropical Rainforest zone had theming I did not expect. I thought they’d lean into the Amazon or Central Africa vibes, but instead everything felt sort of genetically “constructed fort.” There was no bamboo used for fencing—only service access areas like you see all across the zoo. Instead they used thick logs for everything, like what Disney would feature in their Frontier areas. These are definitely the older exhibits.

There’s a clever device used at some of the vista enclosures, however, where a false thick bamboo or thick wood grid gate is fixed in a swung open position. At the Colobus Monkeys exhibit, this suggests that there are humans around who open and close this building up (though it’s actually always open). The same fixed open gates are used for the enclosure glass panes, creating the illusion that the area is actually open wide to the animals.

Wet wood limbs have been curled through the fencing in some places, where they later hardened to look like aged vines.

Other vines and trunks, however, are fake.

Habitat viewing areas have floor-to-ceiling portals, and the vertical barrier posts, naturally stained wood with rope ties, line up with the seams in the glass panels.

The glass panes of the Jaguar Cove exhibit are framed by a massive fake concrete tree. The reader rail identifies this as an “artistic simulation.” Multiple trunks come up from the floor and meet a large felled tree along the top. This is another space that suggests that human structures are continually overgrown.

There is a mixture of authentic, relocated rocks and boulders and concrete, sculpted, faux rocks. Sometimes I even had trouble telling the difference. They appear to treat both kinds with moss. Like at the Oregon Zoo, this false tree trunk is used as a planter for live ones.

The detailing, which Disney calls character plaster, can be traced back to the introduction of faux rock work to landscape immersion habitats.

One thing I’ve not commented on is that at both the Oregon Zoo and here at Woodland Park, not frequently, but occasionally, there will be paw prints and other animal tracks baked into the concrete paths. The zoo’s educational guide for this zone encourages younger visitors to pay attention:

Look near your feet. Do you see animal tracks? Follow the tracks. Can you figure out what made them? What story do the tracks tell?

It’s not nearly as involved as what you see at the Disney’s Animal Kingdom. But they are clearly using this character plaster as an imaginative teaching tool.

The opposite side of Jaguar Cove really provides the impression that the jungle canopy is steadily encroaching all around us.

The face of the indoor / aviary building is themed to appear locally built, and vines creep and crawl all over it and into the wood grids and fencing.

The Tropical Rain Forest indoor exhibit is really elaborately themed. This surprised me, as it opened in 1992, towards the tail end of the landscape immersion era. Not all theming needs to suggest human habitation; sometimes the best stuff is just faux-nature.

Faux tree trunks come up from the floor to separate the exhibits which have organic, irregularly-shaped viewing areas. Some form benches.

There is a misting which provides constant 85% humidity in an environment kept between 70 to 80 degrees. But what makes this space remarkable is the lighting.

Special theater lights with very direct, warm, orangish and yellowish throws make the entire area feel like you are at the foot of a forest floor with sunshine streaming through the foliage and canopy above here and there.

Combined with the mist, you get dramatic beams.

It’s very cinematic, the kind of thing you’ve seen in jungle floor nature settings a thousand times. The zoo’s educational guide for this zone tells us:

As you go through the doors, you are entering the forest floor. What is it like here? Is it sunny and bright? No, it is shady—the tall trees block the sun. Only about 1% of the sunlight actually reaches the forest floor.

As the floor ramps upward, the hardscape changes to planks and bamboo rails now wrap the exhibits on the left side.

Bare green carpet covers the opposite walls; they are designed to lean on and rest.

This bridge-like treatment suggests we are ascending further up into the forest canopy, and the animals on display reflect this. It’s not unlike a treehouse.

The passages ends with the entrance to the aviary. Elaborate wood and bamboo gates frame the entrance and exit.

All aviaries have a door system resembling an airlock—you open one set, stay in the liminal space until they close, and open the second set.

They also often employ the thick clear plastic strips you see at the back of house doors at a supermarket or warehouse. But here, the treatment is completely themed.

Strong metal wires hang like doorway beads. They are covered with very thick and heavy wooden dowel pieces that clank together like wood chimes when you pass through. They feel appropriately native yet are effective at keeping the birds in.

Now the shape language shifts to a tropical island shipwreck motif.

The rope netting and wood posts here give off strong Robinson Crusoe vibes.

Appropriately, they also remind of the related Swiss Family Robinson and the film’s signature treehouse attraction at Disneyland, which opened in 1963.

The exit is treated the same at the entrance, and soon I’m outside again. Just like at Disney theme parks, signage that is required by fire and other safety codes sometimes has to break the aesthetic of the design.

It’s very easy to tell the difference between the Disney-style themed barriers…

…and the original metal pipe fencing from the early 1980s.

I mostly noticed the fencing at Woodland Park. You could track where you were and what the geographic narrative was supposed to be by the fence along the path, most anywhere within the zoo.

Humboldt Penguins Exhibit

The penguin exhibit, next to the zoo’s west entrance / exit / store, ups the ante once again with some very Disneyesque themed elements. This area opened in May 2009, and transports us to the desert coast of Peru, because not all penguins live at the South Pole.

A boat prop like this could have come straight out of Animal Kingdom. It doubles as a photo op, with crates for children to stand on. According to the exhibit’s media guide:

As you enter the exhibit, step across a school of ornamental anchovies and encounter an authentic-style Peruvian wooden fishing boat, created by the master builders at Port Townsend’s Wooden Boat Foundation. A great play-element for kids, the boat interlaces the message of local, small-scale fishing with penguins, people and conservation.

There is a processional descent through a gate as the hardscape slope downward. Presumably, this is closed at night when zoo hours have concluded.

Everything is framed by really nice, hand-painted bilingual Spanish / English murals that place us in Peru. These are examples of what Disney calls ghost graphics and story graphics. Ghost graphics are background visuals that support placemaking, and still function when not read. Story graphics can contain information about the space and the animals on display, are intended to be read, and themed to fit in with the rest of the environmental design.

Disney also calls required instructions operational graphics. These might be the height and health requirements for a roller coaster, for example, or a dining menu. Here, actual rules, like DO NOT CLIMB OVER THE WALL are combined with fictional rules that support the spatial narrative of the exhibit.

The downward grade is gradual and the path wide. I can imagine a large school group filling the space, being guided slowly forward by a docent.

The faux rock work feels very realistic.

At the end of the descent, a rusted anchor prop sits. In typical Disney fashion, the patina has been clear coated with a glaze to prevent any rust from flaking off. No scrapes or tetanus shots today.

Here is a great example of a themed story graphic. We are given some information but it is part of the overall spatial design. These graphics do not look like they were produced by the zoo designers who put up the entry panel in the Tropical Rain Forest zone. They look like they were nailed up by residents.

Here a show set, as exhibit designers call them, suggests we are at a research station, complete with weather equipment on the roof. Known as a Research Blind, in that we might see the animals but it is difficult for them to see us, the media guide describes:

Researchers study penguin behavior and work towards their protection at the guano reserve in Punta San Juan. Bringing their work to life, an interactive research blind in the exhibit recreates a typical setting for a wildlife researcher where you’ll not only get a view of the penguin colony, but also see interesting work-in-progress from a researcher.

This anemometer with the little cups spinning around is something you’ve probably seen before at a harbor.

There are a variety of educational story graphics in the space.

There are many layers of information to take in. Graphics are on clipboards as if they were drawn by the researchers.

Nature facts are presented as hand-written notes between the research staff.

Everyone has been given a name. This is typical of Animal Kingdom’s show sets. Countless pieces of graphic ephemera, props, and other small details suggest that people were here, but we somehow just missed them.

The subtle suggestion is that you are one of the scientists. This allows younger visitors in particular to playact while they observe the animals, mixing education with make-believe.

The exhibit’s donor credits is also presented as a ghost graphic to the left of the exit gate. The entire list of supporters is broken into three blocks of hand-painted lettering in both English and Spanish like the other ghost graphics murals here. The mural has been aged and distressed, and seamlessly blends with all the other exhibit’s design elements. The words are legible, but are communicated at a background level. This is a group of donors who do not feel the need to shout.

Tropical Asia: Banyan Wilds

This addition to the Woodland Park Zoo opened in May 2015, and was designed by the same firm which developed the Humboldt penguins exhibit, Studio Hanson | Roberts. Here we find a convincing, dense jungle landscape with many credible structures that provide a strong sense of place.

The main gateway didn’t appeal to me much, however. It feels more like a Las Vegas resort pool area-styled thatch roof here, with stone blocks that remind me of a Hawaiian luxury golf course or gated community entry.

Here we have the gooseneck barn lighting that is common to many themed environments. There is a light patina of weathering, but it’s subtle.

Over the uneven fence to the left I spy the first hints of a cultural presence. People appear to live here in close proximity with the wildlife.

Like the penguin exhibit, the educational moments are presented as story graphics nailed up by the locals.

Looking around, you’ll notice this is an area where people work and collect resources and also a place where wildlife lives, the exhibit’s media guide says. We are at the central plaza area, called Crossroads.

There are themed water spigots alongside modern utility connections on some of the buildings.

As the exhibit’s media guide notes, shoes have been left outside; in Malaysia shoes are typically removed before entering.

There is an interesting mix here of more modern architecture with cultural accents. I feel like I’m in a Southeast Asian jungle, but now. Not in the past.

Walking in, I find an office for biologists called the Field House.

Everything appears loose, but is affixed to the tabletop. This appears to be someone’s workspace.

Nailed down notes and graphics constitute a show set.

There is a map of the actual region where these tigers live. We are somewhere specific.

The neatest feature was the four large flat panel displays in the wall which would occasionally show tiger footage, but for most of the time functioned as a false bookshelf, complete with a rotating table fan and small bits of paper blowing in the breeze. A digital show set.

It’s really quite effective and adds to the immersivity of the space. I would presume when they are doing tiger programming here the screens can be used as part of the presentation.

More story graphics in the same style communicate information about endangered species.

The donation box looks like an antique trunk, rusted and weathered.

You see these both at real tourist destinations and within theme parks as well. So-and-so miles to here and here and here. The fins are hand-painted and realistic. It does not look like the Woodland Park Zoo installed these signs.

Across the way is the front of the house I saw the back of on my walk in. According to the media kit, a caretaker for a palm nursery lives here. The structures are supposed to stand out alerting you to the development happening in this area of the world and the threats to wildlife trying to coexist in these forests.

The themed string lights are a nice touch.

As are the farming implements mounted on the wall, which suggest that I just missed the caretaker.

Motorbike tire tracks in the hardscape show that even more people are around.

These are as well done as any of the tracks at Animal Kingdom.

Wildlife tracks are mixed with footprints.

There is a motif running throughout Bayan Wilds, that of roadway gates, open or closed. The kind you would see on off-road areas around the world; thick steel tubing with red warning paint stripes.

This animal enclosure suggests a road that can be driven on. Beyond the barrier, the hardscape continues into the habitat.

Elsewhere the gates are open.

The overgrowth shows that they are always fixed in the open position.

The hardscape suggests that people can drive into animal habitats at any time. This is a shared landscape. The theming in Banyan Wilds conveys the conservation message that people and wildlife live in the same setting, sometimes in conflict. Just like at Disney’s Animal Kingdom.

A new Forest Trailhead exhibit is coming to Woodland Park Zoo in 2026, and I’m curious to see if these same kind of Disney-inspired thematic touches will be incorporated.

As Dr. George and I will assert in Kingdoms of Artifice, the contemporary zoo is an increasingly series of themed spaces which has positively affected zoo design. Themed wildlife displays close the loop on the landscape immersive model, making the visitor experience just as holistic and engaging as it has become for the animals.

Kingdoms of Artifice - Part 2: Woodland Park Zoo, Day One.

January 10, 2025 by Dave Gottwald

As the second part of my site research last summer for Disney and the Theming of the Contemporary Zoo: Kingdoms of Artifice, my collaboration with Dr. Benjamin George in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning at Utah State University, I visited the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle, Washington.

Woodland Park Zoo. Click for link. Map data: Ⓒ Google.

Dating back to 1899, the zoo began—as many such collections of the nineteenth century did—as a private menagerie for a robber baron-era real estate and lumber magnate named Guy Carleton Phinney. Six years after he died, Guy’s widow sold his 188-acre estate to the City of Seattle and it became Woodland Park. Bisected by Washington State Route 99, the current zoo occupies the western half of the property. It has been consistently expanded and updated beginning in the late 1960s.

Woodland Park Zoo is true to its name. Wooded. The landscaping is surprisingly dense. I don’t know what I expected but not this. The footprint of the grounds is tall and fairly narrow. Though the zoo’s paths are organic, winding and twisting throughout the habitat zones, the land itself is a portrait-orientated rectangle framed by roadways on all four sides.

At the zoo’s main entrance adjacent to the front parking lot is the expected store, guest services, restrooms, and an education center where school groups assemble for tours.

This plaza has a very 1970s look. That style of dark wood and shingle roof that you see in strip malls around the San Francisco Bay Area. There are light “safari” touches like crossbeams that extend past the rooflines.

Savanna Overlook

As opposed to the Oregon Zoo, a paved Main Loop allows guests to navigate the grounds in either a clockwise or counterclockwise direction. Off that primary path are lots of sub loops. Most are unpaved, rough dirt or gravel. Directly ahead from the lobby / foyer moment of the entrance plaza is a Savanna Overlook area.

This intimate, African-themed village was added in 2001, shortly after Disney’s Animal Kingdom opened. During my visit I quickly began to notice that the newer the exhibit is, the more its design has been Disneyized. Rather than at the Oregon Zoo, where theming was employed in a significant redesign that changed the overall structure of the grounds and reframed its presentation, here at Woodland Park these elements have been added on incrementally, bit by bit.

Immediately around the corner to the right is a small thatch hut.

To the left is a weathered shed establishing a contemporary Central African setting.

Two larger huts draw guests into the area in the classic Disney wienie fashion. One is directly ahead, the other off to the right side.

Originally, the design of this space was more specific to Central and Southern Kenya. As the zoo described the original vision in a 2010 blog post:

We sought to augment that natural history story by developing an African Village area, a viewpoint along the Savanna that was themed with Maasai- and Kikuyu-inspired architecture and cultural interpretations about everyday village life and experiences at the intersection of humans and wildlife.

The interior of the largest hut was once used as a cultural performance space. However, the zoo changed its mind and began de-theming some of the more specific aspects of the Savanna Overlook. Again, from the same post:

Despite our original intentions, what we ended up with in the African Village exhibit area was ultimately appropriative. The space lacked the cultural engagement of the African diaspora in our own community, and has not appropriately represented key perspectives on East African modern culture and conservation challenges over the past 20 years…our conservation work and our representation of that work must be decolonized…removing cultural elements and interpretations that were created with an appropriative lens.

Again in the Disney style, a non-functioning well suggests a water supply. It’s all part of the set.

The primary shed structure beckons visitors with open doorways to both the left and the right. The silhouettes of wildlife observers in the darkened space create a dramatic visual.

Like at many zoos, the vistas are staged in a wide, landscape format. These enclosures, some with two large viewports like 16:9 eyes, provide a sense of theatrical voyeurism. You watch “the movie” through these massive glass panels. Depending on the animals and their distance from guests, these portals are partially open, as seen here.

On the interior walls are props in the Disney style with handwritten labels.

These aren’t intended to be didactic. Like the village well, they simply contribute to the narrative of the space.

I didn’t expect any themed typography. But sure enough, the capacity notice (likely required by fire code) is stenciled and weathered.

The exteriors all have faux distressing straight out of Hollywood central casting.

Same with the hardscape throughout. Cracked and weathered.

African Savanna

The Savanna Overlook themed village was an addition to the larger African Savanna area which opened in 1980. Again, in the zoo’s own words:

Its inspired design was among the pioneering zoo exhibits that displayed immersive landscapes. The savanna made it possible for giraffe, zebra, ostriches and other wildlife to mingle together on a seemingly boundless and verdant landscape.

This is what I meant by wooded. The plantings completely remove you from the urbanity of Seattle and effectively block out the world beyond the zoo. The density of the landscape really slows you down to take it all in. Whatever rush of the big city you brought along with you just melts away. I entered eager and wound up; by the first ten minutes I was wandering the trails at a snail’s pace.

All of the views in the African Savanna are carefully curated and staged. There are natural openings in the canopy at each stop, and it’s evident that the landscaping is occasionally pruned of overgrowth to maintain each vista.

The vistas are postcard-esque, formatted in an almost widescreen aspect radio, ready to be photographed. Whether or not the designers were thinking cinematically, that’s the resultant effect. Perhaps since wildlife in contemporary times is meant to be experienced through the lens—either at a zoo or biological preserve or on open safari; with binoculars, a still camera, or with video—it’s really the only way to think about staging the animals in their environments.

Fencing is obscured by hedges and overgrowth, but if you look carefully you can see the chain link painted dark green deep within. It’s the same principal as employed at Disney’s Animal Kingdom, just far less sophisticated.

It’s pretty obvious which barriers date back to the early 1980s.

Yet themed elements now co-exist with older infrastructure and displays.

The material treatments all suggest everything was built by the local population. Signage beams include hand-tied, weathered rope and unfinished wood.

At times modern chainlink fences are required.

But wherever possible, barriers are also themed with organic, irregular wood.

Some of this is scattershot when seen up close. But from a distance, it serves as effective camouflage, disguising back-of-house and service areas.

All throughout the African Savanna zone, older, pragmatic and unadorned barriers collide with more recent, organically themed ones.

The designers also included evidence of natural, local problem-solving.

Everything is hand-tied, and shelters combining machined lumber with tree trunks provide a kind of realism. You can imagine this sort of jerry-rigged approach in Central Africa. You build with what’s at hand. As I saw at the Oregon Zoo, it’s sort of a Robinson Crusoe vibe. The message is that someone in the wild assembled this out of the elements they could find.

Faux rock work, which began with the immersion exhibit movement, is found throughout. These older examples are less sophisticated than what can be found at Disney parks around the globe. But they still date back to the work David Hancocks pioneered at the Woodland Park Zoo in the mid-1970s when he redesigned the gorilla exhibit to simulate a more natural environment. Zoos across the world eventually followed suit.

Typically in smaller, cave-like settings, the shapes of the wildlife viewing portals are organic and irregular rather than rectilinear.

In some places themed fencing has been integrated into this earlier rock work.

It was curious to find transitions in the hardscape between landscape zones. They are not as subtle as you’d find at a Disney park, but still the designers were at least thinking about it.

Given the layering that has been grafted onto the Woodland Park Zoom over the years, it’s not just barriers that are mismatched. The overall wayfinding and graphic design is all over the place. Some attempt a bare-bones theme with the typographic choices.

A handful of signs appears decades old, as above. Others are more late 1990s or early 2000s like this example.

Tropical Asia: Assam Rhino Reserve

After touring Africa I moved on to the Asia part of the zoo. Rather than a single zone, Asia is broken up into several smaller subsections which have been added and remade since the 1980s.

For many years this part of the zoo held a world-famous elephant exhibit. “After several years of mounting criticism over the condition” of the animals, they were relocated and the zone was redeveloped and reopened in 2015 as a rhino reserve.

Immediately, cultural elements are present. We are somewhere in Asia, but it’s not exactly clear where. With theming, it’s often to be vague and correct rather than specific and wrong. Disney took this approach to the nth degree at Animal Kingdom, creating entirely fictional villages for their Africa and Asia sections.

Seeing it now in a second zone, the most recent themed attempt at a signage system are these thick bamboo poles with reader panels mounted in the middle.

Again, tied off with thick rope in a shipwreck fashion, as if they were built by locals out of natural elements.

Most of the theming here is accomplished by the fencing. Sometimes barriers far stronger than bamboo are required. These are rhinos after all, which when aggravated can charge at up to 40 miles per hour.

Just like in the African Savanna, barrier types collide at times.

In this zone most of the paths are paved, but there are occasional loops which are not, and are more like the dirt nature trails found at state and national parks. Walking further into the foliage, I discovered lower fences which are clearly cultural. They don’t seem practical as barriers for most animals. These are just for effect. Where were they leading?

As I made my way through a rather dense forest canopy, the path wends and curves before terminating at a very Disney-esque reveal. This seemingly ancient temple is staged exactly like Sleeping Beauty’s Castle—the classic wienie.

This is Peacock Plaza, which opened back in the 1980s as Thai Village. Though no current signage indicates this, we are supposed to be in Thailand. If you didn’t know the original backstory, the restrooms and programming theater area here carry a vaguely South Asian / Indian / Nepalese theme.

Here I began to discover that all the major didactic displays at Woodland Park Zoo incorporate Disney-style props in one way or another. This display teaches younger visitors about illegal wildlife exports.

Cargo shelving suggests customs inspections at SEA-TAC airport.

All lettering is themed in the Disney style with appropriate stencil typefaces choices. It was nice to see these hand/spray painted rather than digitally printed. Props are appropriately weathered and distressed. Patinas are realistic.

Kids open the crates to discover what is being smuggled, and learn about what wildlife products are banned and why. It’s a neatly staged experience quite similar to what you find at many museums.

Moving on through the Asia section are various exhibits, all presented as having been built by the local population. The materials are a mix of wood, bamboo, and tin roof-type sheds. Most enclosures feature full glass walls, some with frosted vinyl graphic treatments.

The hand-tied logs and crossbeams are really well done. It would appear the designers hired fairly skilled artisans to execute this work.

The Rhino Barn as seen here I found particularly interesting. Same vaguely Asian architecture as Peacock Plaza on the outside. But inside, behind the massive panes of thick glass, is an area where rhinoceros are brought out for educational demonstrations. There are ropes and playthings and props.

This ancient temple design is borrowed directly from Disney’s Animal Kingdom. Though not quite as aged or distressed, there is a stylized wall treatment with Indian graphics, and the barrier poles here are topped with brightly painted, teal blue pointed newel cap spires. I immediately thought of the set design from The King and I (1956) with Yule Brenner. It’s a pop interpretation, as opposed to the temples at Animal Kingdom which have more of an air of authenticity.

Tropical Asia: Trail of Vines

The final area in this part of Asia is known as the Trail of Vines where animals are showcased both within stylized enclosures as well as outdoors. As in parts of Africa, faux rock work and caves are well-integrated with organically contoured viewing portals.

There is a mix of concrete sculpted tree trunks and natural landscaping.

You get the sense that the jungle is continually trying to take back the manmade structures. Faux vines creep and crawl over the panel displays.

Again, themed typographic treatments help establish a sense of place.

Hand-tied logs and beams everywhere. All really well done.

For the first time at Woodland Park, I found attention paid to the interior ground surfaces; realistically aged floor planking.

The shape language of the primary didactic displays is similar to what I found earlier. Each sign varies slightly based on the environs. Here, rather than hand-tied bamboo, a series of planks are nailed up to the two support columns which harmonize with the deck treatments.

Same with the fencing. No ties here; all the railing work is nailed in place. The effect is one of a particular population using certain materials in a particular way. This kind of specificity isn’t really necessary—the designers could have easily treated all of Tropical Asia in the same fashion. But these subtleties enhance each subsection and make them distinct from one another.

For my second day at Woodland Park, I’ll take a look at the more recent additions to the zoo and how the theming of these exhibits is increasingly Disney-like.

Continued in Part 3.

Kingdoms of Artifice - Part 1: Oregon Zoo.

November 26, 2024 by Dave Gottwald

This past summer I embarked on site research of a different kind. In 2022 I signed a contract with Dr. Benjamin George at Lexington Books, an academic imprint of Rowman & Littlefield. Our monograph, Disney and the Theming of the Contemporary Zoo: Kingdoms of Artifice, is for their new Studies in Disney and Culture line. Benjamin is an associate professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning at Utah State University. We learned earlier this year that Lexington has been acquired by Bloomsbury, a leading publisher of visual arts and design titles. This means Kingdoms of Artifice will reach an even wider and more appropriate audience.

**Expedition Everest** at Disney’s Animal Kingdom, 2007.

I’ve been collaborating with Benjamin since he contacted me in 2019 over our common interest in theming. This has blossomed into a mutual interest in zoo design and Disney’s impact on that industry in the wake of the opening of Animal Kingdom at Walt Disney World in 1998. From our book proposal:

The opening of Disney’s Animal Kingdom introduced the design principles of the theme park to the display of wildlife. In the decades since, zoo designers the world over have adopted Disney’s approach in theming both the visitor and the animal experience. With Kingdoms of Artifice we critically examine how post-Disney zoo environments combine entertainment with education and complexify authenticity with theatricality.

The village of *Harambe* at Disney’s Animal Kingdom, 2007.

During a year-long sabbatical and beyond, Benjamin has visited over 30 zoos around the world and interviewed zoo design practitioners and even Disney Imagineers. Thus far, he has amassed over 4,000 pages of transcripts and thousands upon thousands of photos.

One place he couldn’t get to was the Pacific Northwest. In 2023, I received the Paul G. Windley Faculty Excellence and Development Award from the University of Idaho, a $1,000 grant which recognizes three consecutive years of excellence in faculty scholarship and provides support for continuing scholarly activities in written research and dissemination. Funded by this award, in July 2024 I visited the Oregon Zoo in Portland, Oregon and the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle, Washington.

Oregon Zoo

The Oregon Zoo dates all the way back to 1888 and is the oldest in the United States west of the Mississippi. In 1925, the zoo moved to the current site of the Portland Japanese Garden and again in 1959 to its present location within a small valley still in Washington Park. At about 64 acres, the zoo is the most popular attraction in the state.

The zoo’s footprint is an organic shape consisting of multiple elevation levels. The varied terrain adds an element of realism to the various habitat areas and their landscaping. The zoo is small enough to be comfortably manageable in a single-day visit.

Entry Plaza

In the spring of 1998—right as Disney’s Animal Kingdom (DAK) opened—a new entrance plaza debuted at the highest level of the site. The zoo was also connected to Portland’s MAX light rail system via the new underground Washington Park Station later that same year.

This new entrance significantly altered how visitors orient themselves to the zoo and begin their visit. It’s heavily themed to the Pacific Northwest with a series of lodge buildings that recall the nation’s National Parks. There is a large outdoor foyer area between the ticket purchase gate and entrance. To the left is the zoo’s primary gift shop and to the right is a restaurant, restrooms, and lockers.

The cafe’s CASCADE GRILL sign is set in Berthold Block, a typeface family dating back to the early twentieth century and in use at the Disney theme parks for years. The barn lighting, sconces, surface treatments, and painting scheme are all very, very Disney.

Great Northwest: A Unique (and Local) Beginning

Opening along with this new entry area was a completely new way to begin a day at the Oregon Zoo—by starting with the region’s local ecosystems and species. In this way visitors begin with that which is most familiar and then as they navigate and weave their way through the site, everything becomes increasingly exotic. One starts in the grand temperate rain forests of the Pacific Northwest and before you know it, you’re on the plains of Africa.

A Native American presence is introduced immediately, with examples of Northwest Coast art and large totem poles. The landscaping appears to be a blend of Washington Park’s natural vegetation and deliberate plantings.

Immersion exhibits begin as you turn the corner, and they seem to employ a blend of natural and artificial rock work. Only with a trained eye can you spot the difference by looking closely. The safety barriers here are rustic and practical.

Yet directly ahead is what appears to be a mountain highway.

The barrier rails on either side look exactly like those you can find all across the state. The subtle suggestion is that if visitors walked this way, a car might come barreling right towards them.

I thought this was quite clever. With the new 1998 entrance, the circulation path became quite prescribed as one-way. Although I suspect it’s not vigorously enforced (and for photo purposes I definitely trekked the wrong direction more than once, if only for a moment), how do you encourage people to walk the right way, or more to the point, discourage them from heading where you don’t want them to? A themed highway was the answer.

In case the highway barriers weren’t obvious enough, an arrow points to the left. Here the design vernacular of the National Forest system is explicitly replicated with the same shape language, typography, and colors. As I’ve detailed prior, Disney has done this at both their theme parks and hotel resorts.

Following the design of the entry plaza, the entire Great Northwest Trail area is intended to appear to be within a federal or state park. The barriers, decking, and shelter structures literally place visitors in a setting that is familiar to and comfortable for locals. This detailed theming thus reframes the zoo’s entrance as being part of a larger outdoor lifestyle and ties it to the experience of living in the region.

Signage follows the conventions one would expect to find elsewhere in recreation areas throughout Oregon. Although the animals are safely contained within immersion habitats, the verbiage presumes they are all in the wild.

A series of bridges break up the different parts of the trail. The walk down this zone was steep. Climbing back up and winding through the rest of the zoo, however, is gradual. This grading plan is well-considered; the longer your day, the more tired you—and your kids—are likely to get. Completing the one-way loop to return to the entrance is not difficult.

The path descends gradually into a dense forest. The highlights here are the bears, bald eagles, and fish—all staged at unique elevation levels. The hardscape and railings suggest we could be walking through any state park in the country.

And yet, here in the hardscape is something Disney has done for years. There are faux animal tracks imprinted into the concrete.

And also artificial fallen trees. A few of them are used as viewing portals into animal enclosures. This provides a fun and immersive experience for younger visitors. I saw more than one child crawling in to get a closer look. Moments like these turn the zoo into a playground while still feeling natural. Trees do fall in the forest, after all.

To access the eagle habitat, visitors walk through a covered wooden bridge which traverses a canyon stream bed. Of all the zones at the zoo, this first area felt the most immersive because many of the trees were already here; the designers simply and seamlessly integrated bridges, paths, and wildlife viewing areas.

As with using the National Parks vernacular, this is smart. The designers start with what people already know and what they see right outside their city or town everyday in Oregon or Washington. The bridge appears to be very much like what you’d drive through in the countryside, yet scaled down for pedestrians.

Within some of the interior viewing areas, didactic displays are themed to be part of rural sheds. The shape language and material choices harmonize with the covered bridge.

This first Pacific Northwest zone functions much like, in software terms, the onboarding for the Oregon Zoo visitor experience. All the interaction points are introduced—the enclosures, photo spots, touch samples, and reader rails. After proceeding through this first zone everyone can read, essentially, the text of the zoo.

Close to exiting the area, I came across a bear viewing enclosure which highlights their relationship to bees and honey. The shed roof suggests a warehouse of some kind.

There are vintage fruit crate label reproductions—what Disney calls ghost graphics, or subtle pieces of graphic design that contribute to a sense of place. Also stacks of prop honey boxes and barn lighting fixtures which are commonly found in their theme parks.

Family Farm

At the tail end of the Great Northwest section, the landscape flattens out and leads to a farm. Many zoos feature a livestock petting area. Here the theme is classic Midwestern red-and-white, something many American children are intimately familiar with from storybooks.

This is something I had never bothered to look into, but apparently the traditional paint scheme is related to European traditions and also red was simply cheaper. It’s another example of thematic design harnessing a visual grammar that is already known to the public.

The hand washing station looks like a well with themed pipes and spigot-style water faucets.

These are the kinds of antique details a zoo could easily skip, but Disney never does.

Across the path opposite appears to be a back-of-house structure. It is themed, again, to a Midwestern small town, all in white planking. Even though it’s likely just office space, the implication is that the fictional family which owns the farm lives here.

Africa

I’m limiting my visual survey to those areas of the Oregon Zoo where thematic design is most evident. Naturally, there’s an Africa section, which most Western zoos typically incorporate into their layouts. The habitat and exhibit elements here span roughly 1989–2007, augmented over time, and you can tell what’s most recent based on how Disneyized it is.

The entry signage for AFRICA didn’t surprise me at all, but was still disappointing. Since the 1990s designers have substituted Carol Twombly’s Lithos (1989) as a “good enough” substitute for the German wood typeface Neuland (1923), familiar to many as the logo lettering from the film Jurassic Park (1993) and used in tropical, exotic settings ever since. I’ve seen both Lithos and Neuland in wildlife preserves, zoos, aquariums, and water parks. Anywhere there’s a jungle.

Nothing says Africa like thatched huts. It’s not necessarily lazy, but theming needs to communicate cultural motifs at a glance, just like a Hollywood backlot set.

Sometimes they are used for signage and graphics.

Other times you can sit in them.

After thatch, the other common sign of Africa-ness is the shed. These are sometimes used for retail and refreshment locations but more commonly employed for back-of-house structures.

These rustic touches are contrasted with the area’s large aviary.

The exterior is quite modern, and the dark material choices are appropriate for the Pacific Northwest.

You can view the aviary from inside an adjacent restaurant, which I did while eating lunch. The bay window panes provided expansive, unobstructed vistas.

Inside, theming takes over. Fencing and barriers all appear to have been constructed by the local population. Uneven, rough-hewn logs with rope and leather ties.

The designers could have kept the interior as modern as the outside, but chose not to. These small moments provide heightened immersion and serve to place visitors within a different ecosystem with its own human construction language and materials vocabulary.

Just outside, I noticed a large artificial baobab tree sculpted in the Disney style. On some of the upper limbs, real trees have been grafted on and live shrubs are visible. It’s basically a massive concrete planter. These newer additions to the Africa area demonstrate that zoo-ness is increasingly defined by the Disney approach.

Where possible, utility fencing is disguised by natural materials such as bamboo.

Other barriers are more detailed and real wood is used.

These “castaway, deserted island shipwreck” rope ties were imported directly from Disney. You can find them all over the Frontierland and Adventureland areas of their parks around the world, implying everything from pirates to Tom Sawyer. Did fences like this exist at zoos before Disney? I doubt it.

Sometimes they collide with modern safety barriers, here in the case of thick glass.

A few parts of the Africa section were clearly older. You can tell by the lack of overall architectural detail and narrative cues.

When more natural materials such as rough logs and rope ties are used, it’s a sign that theming was added on later.

The older parts of this temple-like enclosure are generically Asian. Here I found Torii Gate-style supports all painted dark brown.

One display in particular reminded me of a Disney dark ride vehicle. In the predator habitat, an actual vintage Landrover safari jeep has been cut in half.

It’s both a photo op and a visitor experience. There are prop crates on the floor for getting into the driver seat, passenger side, and rear of the vehicle.

The jeep has been mounted so that its windshield lines up directly with the glass barrier of the enclosure. The animals water and feed in the shade right outside.

A savannah mural is painted on the three walls behind. It’s a very effective illusion, especially for young children.

You sit behind the steering wheel and if you keep your vision narrow and look straight ahead, it appears that you’ve just driven right into the habitat.

I watched several school groups circulate through. It’s a popular spot.

There is one true ride at the Oregon Zoo. One of the last things I did was board the 5/8 scale, 30-inch narrow gauge Washington Park and Zoo Railway which costs a separate $5 ticket. As it was added when the zoo moved in 1958–59, the Disneyland influence is explicit. The line is a single long loop which features a trestle arc at one end and a curved tunnel at the other just before you return to the station. The railroad used to connect the zoo with another part of the park via a longer route which closed in 2013, and there is currently a movement to restore its original transportation function.

Overall the Oregon Zoo was a pleasant experience, and its design demonstrates the ways in which theming can be used to successfully frame and guide the visitor experience.

A new Draft Campus Plan for the site was unveiled in January 2024. Developed in partnership with CLR Design, a leading exhibit and habitat architectural firm based in Philadelphia, on the plan it remains to be seen what new thematic elements—if any—will be added. I certainly look forward to seeing what their designers come up with.

Continued in Part 2.

Animate(d) Architecture Now Available in eBook and Hardcover from Liverpool University Press.

May 10, 2024 by Dave Gottwald

If you don’t write for an academic audience, it can be hard to grasp just how long it takes to bring a project to market. I’m delighted to announce that Animate(d) Architecture: A Spatial Investigation of the Moving Image, a collection edited by Vahid Vahdat and published by Liverpool University Press, is now available in eBook and Hardcover. From the press blurb:

The volume examines animation from a spatial lens. It offers interdisciplinary outlooks to the role of space in animation, including in creating humorous moments in early cartoon shorts, generating action and suspense in Japanese anime, and even stimulating erotic pleasure in pornographic Hentai. Animation, in this book, is approached as a medium that can equip the designers of the built environment with a utopian scope to address our socio-political and ecological crises.

*Comparison of the visual grammar of the multiplane camera and the Disneyland dark ride.*

In my chapter, I describe how Disney’s dark ride model represents a kind of spatialized animation, and I further suggest it is a forgotten conceptual link between animation, the theme park, and today’s first-person gamified and virtual worlds.

I’m especially honored to be published alongside a scholar I have long-cited in my own writing, J. P. Telotte. And as with my prior publications, I enjoy executing my own illustrations. More information about the other contributors and their essays can be found at Liverpool University Press.