Signed, Sealed, Standard

As the architect of the aha, AMY PERRY can draft and diagram inspiration with an eye to every corner. For one, take her look at the NEW YORK CITY SUBWAY IDENTITY, starting with the 1970 NYC Transit Authority Graphics Standards Manual. The manual itself offers a blueprint to building and maintaining the design of the sprawling subway. But when an original copy was found in a basement locker at Pentagram’s New York offices, the discovery begot a 21st-century reprint.

What begins as a foundational document of identity design becomes a Rubik’s cube of reissues and reconfigurations: visual artifact becomes collector’s item, collector’s item becomes experiential exhibit, experiential exhibit becomes microsite.

There’s the 356-page reprint assembled in Pantone spots and Italian cloth wrapping. There’s the MoMA-curated standards design gallery housed in a Midtown subway stop. There’s even the storefront dedicated to standards manuals of all sorts, with its beginnings seeded by the MTA reissue.

Every time the cube is passed into a new set of hands, it’s twisted into a new position, a new project, or a new perspective. In effect, the spins and spinoffs supply a hundred ways to remix one idea — and challenge us to consider our creative builds from at least a few other sides.