America at 250: Our Members Help Tell the Nation’s Story

July 1, 2026

Cybelle Jones

As the United States marks its 250th anniversary, SEGD members are helping define how millions of people experience the nation’s story.

This week, the United States turns 250. It is a milestone that invites both celebration and honest reckoning. American history has always been complex, messy, and fiercely contested, but perhaps never more visibly than it is today. That is precisely what makes this anniversary such a remarkable moment for experiential graphic design. Across the country, new exhibitions and visitor experiences are asking people to hold contradiction and pride at the same time, to stand inside both the beauty and the failures of the American experiment, and decide what they mean today. 

Every designer and firm featured in this story is part of the SEGD community, helping shape how millions of people encounter America’s story at 250.

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Washington, DC: Where the Documents Live

At the National Archives Museum, C&G Partners, in collaboration with Cortina Productions, led the redesign of the institution’s permanent core exhibition, The American Story (pictured above). The new galleries present foundational documents within cinematic, immersive, thematically organized environments, placing them in a broader historical context and offering multiple perspectives on the American experience. It is the first major renovation of the museum in more than 20 years and among the most sophisticated uses of AI in civic storytelling, grounded in the principle that the Archives’ 13 billion records belong to all of us.

Just down the Mall, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History opened In Pursuit of Life, Liberty & Happiness on May 14, led by Michael Denison, Head of Design at the National Museum of American History. The exhibition spans 250,000 square feet across all three floors, showcasing 250 objects from the 1700s to the present. A visual motif of a thread runs through the entire building, reminding visitors how disparate stories from many times and places are bound together. The title itself reorders the Declaration’s familiar words to signal that the pursuit is ongoing, that the promises are still being chased. Seventy-six of the 250 objects have never or rarely been displayed before. Among them is the gunboat Philadelphia, the oldest surviving intact American fighting vessel, now undergoing live on-site conservation with visitors watching through viewing windows. This is history, actively preserved in plain sight. Only a museum can do that.

Perhaps the most dramatic opening of the summer was the Lincoln Memorial Undercroft Museum, which opened on June 25. Design Minds, RLMG, Electrosonic, Color-Ad, and Available Light worked with the National Park Service to create a dynamic experience in the 122-column cathedral beneath the memorial. Visitors can explore the space for the first time in the memorial’s 104-year history. Together, the team transformed the raw infrastructure into something luminous and deeply human. A dynamic film projects images and Lincoln’s words into the depths of the Undercroft (a longer version will replace the current short film in late 2026). The main exhibit hall features interactive experiences, including tactile models depicting alternative memorial designs and details about Daniel Chester French’s Lincoln statue. The experience ends with signed copies of the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th Amendment. Visitors even encounter graffiti left behind by the workers who built the memorial. These preserved features highlight the working-class history behind one of the nation’s most iconic monuments, a story rarely visible to visitors until now. Tickets for opening day sold out immediately.

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Philadelphia: The Birthplace Gets New Galleries

At the National Constitution Center, Luci Creative designed two major new permanent galleries in collaboration with Trivium Interactive. America’s Founding immerses visitors in the dramatic story of how a nation was born and an ambitious experiment in self-government was launched. Brought to life through rare artifacts, immersive environments, and digital interactives, the gallery reveals how the founding generation defined and debated the principles of liberty, equality, and self-government. Governing the Nation explores how power is divided among the three branches of government and shared between federal and state authorities, brought to life through hands-on experiences and artifacts from defining moments in American history. Together, they trace how the Constitution has been interpreted, contested, and applied across time. It is exactly the kind of founding story Philadelphia needs to tell in this anniversary year: not settled history, but a debate still very much alive.

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North Dakota: Worth Every Mile

The most ambitious project of the summer may be the furthest from the coasts. The Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library opens July 4 in Medora, North Dakota, built into the Badlands landscape that Roosevelt himself credited with shaping him into the leader who would become president. Local Projects, Dimensional Innovations (DI), Studio Loutsis, Cortina Productions, RLMG, and Electrosonic collaborated with architect Snøhetta on the $450 million project.

Local Projects led the interpretive master plan and exhibition design, organizing the galleries around four guiding principles: Dare Greatly, Think Boldly, Care Deeply, and Live Passionately. Dimensional Innovations served as the prime experiential design and fabrication contractor. Studio Loutsis designed the vehicular and pedestrian wayfinding, signage, and donor recognition systems, seamlessly guiding visitors from the indoor galleries onto the walking trails of the North Dakota Badlands.

An AI-powered conversational Theodore Roosevelt, a simulated canoe trip down the River of Doubt, and an Elkhorn Ranch campfire experience were created through a collaboration between Local Projects, Cortina Productions, RLMG, Electrosonic, and DI. The goal is simple: visitors learn from Theodore Roosevelt rather than about him. That distinction is everything. It is what the best experiential design strives to achieve.

The Stories We Choose to Tell

What these projects share is not just scale or ambition. It is a commitment to complexity, to telling the American story without flattening it. Instead, they invite curiosity, reflection, and conversation, creating spaces where visitors can engage with history in all its complexity. In a moment when that story is being debated more fiercely than ever, our members keep showing up to do the hard, beautiful work of helping people encounter history on its own terms. As America marks its 250th anniversary, that work feels more important than ever. It is something worth celebrating at 250. And at 251. And beyond.