MoMA Presents Standard Deviations: Types and Families...

Since the late 19th century and throughout much of the 20th, designers have celebrated the socially uplifting promise of industrial production, believing the true path to modernity lay in standardization. A designer's job was to conceive a model that could be converted into a working prototype-a blueprint for a series of objects, each identical and manufactured according to exacting rules. Yet it is human nature to crave individuality, and since the 1980s designers have sought to inject "chromosomes" of unique identity into objects produced on an industrial scale. Digital technology has made the dream of creating families of objects with common traits and distinct behaviors a reality; today, the model of the working prototype is the series. Standard Deviations: Types and Families in Contemporary Design showcases some 150 objects and designs in The Museum of Modern Art's collection that belong to "families," including an important recent acquisition of 23 digital typefaces, on view at MoMA for the first time. The exhibition, on view from March 2, 2011, to January 31, 2012, is organized by Paola Antonelli, Senior Curator, and Kate Carmody, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Architecture and Design, The Museum of Modern Art.

Standard Deviations: Types and Families in Contemporary Design
March 2, 2011-January 31, 2012
The Philip Johnson Architecture and Design Galleries, third floor