maze design Archives | Treinen Farm

Treinen Farm voted one of the ten best corn mazes in the U.S.

Big News! Treinen Farm selected as one of the ten best corn mazes in the U.S. in the USA Today’s Reader’s Choice Award.

From USA Today:

The 10Best Readers’ Choice Award contest launches new categories every other Monday at noon, revealing each category’s 20 nominees. After 4 weeks of voting, the contest closes on the 28th day at noon. On the Friday after voting ends, winners are revealed. Rules allow the public the right to vote online for one nominee per category, per day.

Nominees for all categories are chosen by a panel of relevant experts which include a combination of editors from USA TODAY; editors from 10Best.com; relevant expert contributors; and sources for both these media and other Gannett properties.

10Best.com provides users with original, unbiased, and experiential travel content of top attractions, things to see and do, and restaurants for top destinations in the U.S. and around the world. The core of the site’s uniqueness is its team of local travel experts: a well-traveled and well-educated group who are not only experts in their fields – and their cities – but discriminating in their tastes. These local experts live in the city they write about so the content is constantly updated. 10Best.com averages 5 million visitors per month.

October 18, 2018/by Treinen Farm

2017 Maze

Designing the 2017 Trilobite Cabinet of Curiosities Maze

Before we started to plan the 2017 corn maze, we were contacted by the UW-Madison Geology Museum folks, RIch Slaughter and Brooke Norsted. They suggested doing a trilobite corn maze–and they were pretty persuasive.

We talked a lot about making a trilobite the main image in the maze, and having a sort of geology-ish theme, and then having a lot of fun education and engagement opportunities. I was basically sold when they showed me their trilobite temporary tattoos. So, we were committed to doing a trilobite very early on in the design process.

Angie’s Trilobite

The trilobite was a challenge, though, because a fairly significant proportion of people have never heard of a trilobite. And I was concerned that photos of the maze might be confusing as well. We prefer that people can easily see what the maze is supposed to be when they see the photo.

I struggled over this maze design for a lot longer than usual. I just couldn’t see a way to make the trilobite the main figure and the other geology and science-related imagery make sense.

Paris Metro entrances

Everything started to come together when I settled on an art nouveau style for the design. In a number of the earlier mazes (the dragonfly, the mermaid, Icarus) I’d used a Tiffany stained glass-esque style, and that started to get old. I decided that each year I would pick a different style. For instance, I used a folk art style inspired by linocut designs for The Fox and Grapes maze, and a Japanese Kawaii (“cute”) style for the Killer Baby Unicorn in 2016.

I found the art nouveau style to be interesting, and it was fun to research the artists and their work from that period. I discovered we had a lot of old books in the house from the period of 1890-1915 or so, and many of the covers featured art nouveau designs. I settled on art nouveau as the final selection when I broke my ankle and was unable to accompany my son on a school trip to Europe–I kept looking longingly at those iconic Paris Metropolitain entrances…

The art nouveau style is perfect for our maze because of all the organic forms, like vines and tendrils and all kinds of swirling lines–perfect for getting lost in! And trying out curving fretwork as a border gave me the idea to put the trilobite in a cabinet. A Cabinet of Curiosities, of course.

Cover art nouveau

Cabinets of Curiosities (also called “Cabinets of Wonder”) were, according to the British Library website, “small collections of extraordinary objects extraordinary objects which, like today’s museums, attempted to categorise and tell stories about the wonders and oddities of the natural world.”

Perfect for our maze theme! We already had “Shelves of Curiosities” in our library here at the Treinen Farm, so it was simple to use an Art Nouveau cabinet design to contain the various preserved specimens in our Trilobite Maze Design.

Angie’s “Bookshelf of Curiosities”

July 13, 2017/by Treinen Farm

2015 Maze, corn maze, Maze Design, mazes

See us on USA Today’s 10Best Corn Mazes to Visit for Family Fun

Check out the USA Today 10Best website to see our maze! It’s so awesome to be featured on the site, and it’s also great to see the mazes that farms around country have designed this year. We’ve met many corn maze operators from all over when we’ve gone to various corn maze conventions in the off season (bet you didn’t know there was such a thing as a “corn maze convention” Well, there is. And they’re lots of fun.)

Take a look at the photos of mazes on this list. They’re all good mazes, but some of the images are actual photos and some are “mock-ups” of the design superimposed on corn or on an aerial photo (ours is an actual photo, BTW. Alan went up in a small plane and took about a gazillion photos to get one with the light juuuust right…)

September 13, 2015/by Treinen Farm

2013 Corn Maze, Maze Design, Uncategorized

Here There Be Monsters…the 2013 Treinen Farm Sea Monster Corn Maze

Finally! The design for 2013 is finished, and the crew is working on getting it cut into the field!

The inspiration for this year’s maze started with thinking about octopi, which are one of my favorite animals.

Kraken attacking a ship idea for corn maze

I collected a lot of images of octopi, but I realized that an octopus wasn’t quite exciting enough on its own…but a giant squid, or better yet, a Kraken, is definitely maze-worthy.

Once I settled on the squid, I found some old maps that had sea monsters and often really ornate compass roses, which worked well.

I tried to fit in some other images, like the face of the wind blowing and the ship sailing over the edge of the world, but they didn’t work within the size of the field.

: Here There Be Monsters–perfect theme for our 2013 corn maze

July 5, 2013/by Treinen Farm

2013 Corn Maze, Maze Design

The Making of a Maze Summer Camp

I think that the thing that Alan and I love most about our corn maze is the process of creation–all of it, from brainstorming and sketching, to actual design, and then to the task of carving it into the corn field. This year, we’ve partnered with the Center for Engagement in Madison WI , to turn our incredibly fun but private process into something that can be actually experienced by young people: the very first “Maze Mania” summer camp.

The camp will consist of twelve kids and three teachers, and their task will be to work with Alan and I as they learn the maze design and cutting process. And it’s not easy work: they’ll be challenged to come up with a design (for the Children’s Maze) that meets very specific parameters, and part of the camp is spent actually cutting the maze into the cornfield on a (probably) hot summer day.

For me, the camp is about sharing the joyfulness of math and design art and seeing a project through from the beginning to completion. I spend a good week designing the big maze, and Alan spends another week cutting it, so in early summer we just living and breathing the maze 24/7. It’s pretty intense, but fun. It’s not often that a real-world business has a process like this that is both interesting and accessible to young people, so we are eager to share the experience.

May 23, 2013/by Treinen Farm

GRIN Technology, Maze Design, Steampunk, Uncategorized

How I Design the Treinen Farm Corn Maze Part 4

The maze is DONE! (Actually it was done a little while ago, but now we have a photo to prove it.) Alan and the crew got the design cut into the field right before we had to leave for Montana…and then we thought we’d be returning to beautiful, six+ feet tall corn. Instead, we returned home to mournful, very thirsty corn that was about knee high and had pretty much stopped growing. Hmm, it’s not that great a maze when you can see all the trails. So, we did our rain dances, hung clothes on the line, left the laptop “accidentally” open on the patio table, all the things that in the past have guaranteed rain. No luck. We got a backyard swimming pool, thinking that would trigger a cold, rainy summer. Nope. We finally pulled out the only trick we could think of–we purchased irrigation equipment.

That worked–before we had pipe set up to irrigate the maze, we got a few storms and the corn perked right up. It’s been growing at that insanely fast rate that corn can do with adequate moisture and hot weather, so it’s going to be plenty tall for the season. Yay!

The video shows the final design, and here’s the preliminary photo below. Alan and I have to go over the photo, see where he made any errors–sorry, “took artistic liberties with my design”–and then we either go back into the maze and make changes, or, more likely, change the map to reflect the real maze. And there’s always Photoshop…

Treinen Farm 2012 Corn Maze Preliminary Photo

Our first photo of the 2012 corn maze–we’ll get a better photo once we correct any errors that we find using this one.

June 27, 2012/by Treinen Farm

GRIN Technology, Maze Design, Steampunk, Uncategorized

How I Design the Treinen Farm Corn Maze Part 3

The pressure is on..yesterday Alan pointed out that you can “row” the corn already. Since I’ve been married to a farmer for a number of years, I know what that means: the plants are up enough that when you are driving by you can see the rows. Good thing I’ve been working on the design–did I mention that I’m not done, though? It usually takes me about a week to get the design ready to give to Alan, and I’m probably halfway there.

June 6, 2012/by Treinen Farm

GRIN Technology, Maze Design, Steampunk

Treinen Farm Maze Design Step Two –the Idea Collage

Here’s the next step in maze design–collecting ideas and images and taping them to my closet door next to my desk. I use these as inspiration for the preliminary sketches, and to see which elements will work visually. I’m also looking at ideas for incorporating math and science for our field trips. It’s easy to spend too much time on this phase because it’s so fun…

Okay, so far the maze will be incorporating GRIN technologies (Genetics, Robotics, Information Technology, Nanotechnology); a cyborg, a carbon nanotubes, some da Vinci images, including the Vitruvian Man and a perpetual motion machine. And steampunk…lots of steampunk.

Next step: start the actual design (this year I’m using iDraw on my mac.)

June 4, 2012/by Treinen Farm

Posts

Big News! Treinen Farm selected as one of the ten best corn mazes in the U.S. in the USA Today’s Reader’s Choice Award.

Don’t Miss a Thing!