Design Museum: One of a Series

Great Ideas of Humanity is an ongoing exhibition at the Design Museum of Chicago that celebrate the enduring power of idea through design. The design committee meets, creates a list of ”great ideas” from a variety of thinkers, and commissions artists or designers to create a visual response. I was chosen as one of the designers to produce a work for this year’s exhibition, and my chosen quote is from Toni Morrison’s “The Foreigner’s Home” essay:

“Other dangers globalism poses are the distortion of the public and the destruction of the private…There is the looking-glass phenomenon of the “play” of the public in our private, interior lives…Since the space in which both civic and private life is lived has become so indistinguishable from inner and outer, from inside/outside, these two realms have been compressed in a ubiquitous blur, a rattling of our concept of home.”

My goal was to visualize the “inside/outside” nature that she speaks of in her essay in my work. I really liked the feeling of displacement and of being both inside and outside, as well as spaces that are public vs private, and that it can occupy a mental as well as physical space.

The typeface used is FH Lecturis, which is a neo-grotesk by independent type foundry Typografische. In addition, the non-gray text read from top to bottom highlights a poem within the text; a secret within a secret:

“Public, Private,
Public, Private,
From inner/outer,
From inside/outside,
These two realms have been compressed in a ubiquitous blur;
A rattling of our concept of home.”

Exhibition: Great Ideas of Humanity, Design Museum of Chicago 2025