Subway sign art - Brittany

Something that got me thinking about text as art is a trend called "subway art" that I've been seeing around. I spent a few years working for a papercrafting company, and, though not into crafting/scrapbooking myself, I've seen a lot of the scrapbooking world. Subway art is something that came to my attention that way.

This is "subway art" as it is known in the scrapbooking world.

When I first heard of this, I could not figure out what it had to do with subways. I did a little poking around and found that it's also called "subway sign art" or "bus scroll art." This is where I think it came from:

I guess how it worked was that the public bus system used (uses?) a list of bus stop locations to display on the bus so people know where it's headed, and after each stop, the sign would scroll down to the next location. I don't know at what point people decided to make this scroll into a home decor item, but there it is. I actually quite like it. I can see using the location scrolls as a souvenir of one's travels, especially the antique style ones like the London scroll above. Here's a New York City one as a decor element.

Somewhere along the line, someone thought of making quotes or other words into a subway sign with a theme, and to use it for other types of home decor and scrapbooking, such as vinyl lettering on the wall, inspirational messages, or as a customized sign reflecting one's interests.

The DIY (do-it-yourself) crafts and decor wave has embraced computers to make this sort of thing much easier to do, and lots of people sell subway art pieces on Etsy and eBay and other places. If it's done well, I think it can look really cool. I like the contrast of density in the fonts, and the negative space, and sometimes even a judicious contrast of typefaces can add significance to a piece of subway art.