Case Study
Cooper Hewitt
Art of Noise
Cultural
From identity to immersive graphic environment, we transformed sound into a typographic experience.
For Art of Noise at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, we created the exhibition identity and full graphic system, including environmental graphics, interpretive labels, diagrams, and large-scale typographic interventions. Rooted in the museum’s custom typeface, the identity translates the exhibition’s core idea—that design shapes how we hear—into a spatial, responsive experience where sound becomes visible.
This major exhibition examines how design has shaped the way we experience music over the last century.
— Wallpaper
Art of Noise traces how graphic design and technology shape the way we hear and remember music. Our approach extended that idea directly into the exhibition’s graphic system through a custom typographic application that transformed live sound into responsive motion. Built around Cooper Hewitt’s bespoke typeface, the app became the engine for the key visuals—analyzing audio in real time and mapping frequency, amplitude, and tempo to variables such as scale, weight, tracking, and distortion. Sound did not simply inspire the identity; it actively authored it.
This generative foundation informed a modular framework that moved fluidly between precision and expression. The system supported object labels, diagrams, and timelines with clarity and structure, while scaling into bold architectural interventions throughout the galleries. Large typographic moments activated walls and thresholds, translating sonic qualities into visual rhythm through repetition, density, and spatial tension. Typography operated at multiple registers—disciplined at the interpretive level and immersive at the environmental scale.
Each motion output was generated live, creating evolving compositions unique to the exhibition’s soundscape. Bass tones expanded and grounded the letterforms, higher frequencies introduced fragmentation and energy, and rhythmic shifts shaped cadence. The result was a responsive identity that transformed typography from a static communication tool into a performative instrument—one that listened, reacted, and moved with the music.
Art of Noise is organized by SFMOMA and curated by Joseph Becker, Curator of Architecture and Design, SFMOMA, with support from Divya Saraf, former Curatorial Assistant in Architecture and Design, SFMOMA. The presentation at Cooper Hewitt is curated by Joseph Becker with support from Cynthia Trope, Associate Curator of Product Design and Decorative Arts.
Exhibition design by teenage engineering. Architect of Record, and fabrication by Pink Sparrow. Exhibition graphic design by Associate.
