Brain Pickings Original: Typography of the SFMoMA

Sub-cognitive art, or what the elevator and the women’s restroom have to do with aestheticism.

We’re doing something a bit unusual today — a Brain Pickings original piece, driven by our own creative exploits. Namely, our hybrid fascination with modern art and typography.

While at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art recently, we had a peculiar thought — like all museums, this is a space dedicated to giving art a place to live. But there’s also a meta-layer to the art experience that comes from the aesthetic and conceptual life of the space itself — the colors, the architecture, the subtle design touches.

These elements contribute to our experience of the art inside, but often operate below the surface of our cognitive awareness.

So we decided to bring one of those meta-elements to the forefront of attention — the typography used inside the museum, on anything from exhibition signage to elevator buttons to restroom signs.

Explore the full set on Flickr — and do Stumble it if you dig. Then, next time you’re in a public art space, consider the meta-aestheticism that it oozes and how it affects your experience.

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This entry was posted on Monday, June 22nd, 2009 at 7:15 am in art, culture, design and was tagged art, cool, design.