D-Day

Solution

By 1944, Europe had been dominated by Germany, who had constantly sent coded messages to retain their stronghold. But they didn’t know the brilliant minds at Bletchley Park had created Colossus, a machine which could intercept and decode messages and provide the most valuable intelligence of the entire war. Their invention enabled the code-breakers to intercept messages which they replaced with fake messages that convinced the Germans to move their troops away from Normandy to defend Calais. The coded messages, were printed on ticker tape and fed into Colossus for decryption. To authentically reflect the three parts of the exhibition – Interception, Intelligence, Invasion – Rose had each word printed in code on the ticker tape. We then took inspiration from the WWII landing craft, folding the ticker tape to form the letter ‘D’, symbolising Bletchley Park’s role in D-Day. Continuing the dots theme, Rose created halftone versions of D-Day images to use with the marque across all marketing campaign materials and merchandise. To add to the visitor experience, Rose also designed a permanent 2.5m memorial made from powder-coated steel, which was sited outside the restored Teleprinter Building (and now the permanent home of the D-Day visitor experience), to acknowledge the vital contribution to D-Day through the brilliant work done at Bletchley Park.

Result

The exhibition was officially opened in May 2019 by HRH The Duchess of Cambridge, Kate Middleton. The hugely successful exhibition regularly welcomes over 1,000 visitors each day and has played a major role in revitalising Bletchley Park’s plans for future visitor growth.