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Chicago Design Through the Decades
Chicago Design Through the Decades
Art on theMART Projection Installation
Chicago Design Archive
Winter 2022
Article in the Architect’s Newspaper
The Chicago Design Through the Decades project is a swift, exciting journey through the history of Chicago design spanning the last one hundred years (1920s–2020s). The project is based on the vast collection of the Chicago Design Archive (CDA), a permanent online record of Chicago design, currently holding over 3200 examples of work by over 1100 Chicago designers, including posters, books, and other publications, from typography specimens to identity systems.
Investigating a human-centered approach and following engaging characters and textual tidbits from archived design works, the journey begins in the 1920s with the era’s painterly and illustrative techniques. Forms then evolve under the modes of photography, minimalism, futurism, three-dimensionality, and postmodernism throughout the 1930s–2010s. Ultimately, the journey ends in the 2020s with digital portraits produced by using neural networks, a machine learning (ML) approach that formed the foundation of much of modern artificial intelligence (AI)—technologies becoming increasingly prevalent in contemporary art. This part is a tribute to Chicago as an alma mater of neural networks, where in 1943, Warren McCulloch, a neurophysiologist at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC), and logician Walter Pitts from the University of Chicago, proposed the first mathematical model of a neural network.
Each ‘design decade’ emphasizes specific understandings and methods. The underlying research made it possible to apprise how particular characteristics evolved over time in the presence of social, cultural, political, economic, and environmental contexts. Decades presents an opportunity to review the development of Chicago design history as a series of chronological stages and connects them into a cohesive visualization.
At once nostalgic and whimsical, the overall journey abounds with both humorous and sobering moments. It harnesses immersive technology to focus public attention on the complexity, historical context, critique, and interpretation of archival materials. The breadth of creative works by Chicago designers shown in the time-lapse visualization illustrates the perpetual advancement of design, a field that continually expands, allowing members of the public to immerse themselves in design history. Following seasons of forced social isolation, this outdoor public projection celebrates the resurgence of communal gathering experiencing art together, sharing impressions and collaborative success in the streets of Chicago.
For the team, the project opened new avenues for collaboration between design, science and digital humanities to elevate the appreciation of Chicago design history, and to contribute to the recognition of Chicago as an international modern design center through their use of innovative technologies.
Daria Tsoupikova, UIC School of Design & UIC Electronic Visualization Laboratory
Sharon Oiga, UIC School of Design & Chicago Design Archive
Guy Villa Jr, Columbia College Chicago
Krystofer Kim, NASA
Jack Weiss, Chicago Design Archive
Cheri McIntyre, Chicago Design Archive
Lauren Meranda, Chicago Design Archive
AI/ML contribution by Fabio Miranda, UIC Electronic Visualization Laboratory
Music by Louis Schwadron, Sky White Sound
Featuring vocalist/activist: Nnelolo Karen Wilson-Ama’Echefu, and rapper Elijah Robb
Chicagolandia Oral History Project
The Chicagolandia Oral History Project documents the history of the lives, work, and culture of Latinx suburban communities in the Chicagoland area. Participants share and record stories of the triumphs and struggles of the past to create a more just and equitable future for all Latinx communities. The Project uses oral history to create community dialogue about the history and future of Latinx communities in suburban Chicagoland. As Studio Brazen, I worked with intern and NEIU student Isabel Martinez to develop the visual brand and website for the project. .
Just Action Equity Toolkit
Just Action is a citywide coalition of over 340 civic leaders and institutions calling for a collective commitment to reimagine how civic power flows through three primary channels: Money, Narrative and Policy. In 2021, I designed the interactive Just Action Equity Toolkit. The website acts as a portal for individuals and organizations to access and take a series of assessments that guide users to customized resources to improve equity practices.
Notable organizational participants of the Just Action toolkit include Englewood Arts Collective, Northwestern’s Center for Community Health. Chicago Foundation for Women, Elevated Chicago, Chicago United for Equity (CUE), UIC Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy, 3Arts, Conant Family Foundation, Chicago Public Library Foundation, Kids First Chicago, MacArthur Foundation, Prison + Neighborhood Arts Project, City Bureau, Garfield Park Community Council, the NPHM, the Reader +More.
Inequity for Sale
Inequity for Sale is an artistic, virtual, and physical exploration of homes sold on Land Sale Contracts in the 50s and 60s, demonstrating how legalized theft in the past directly contributed to present inequity in Black communities. The project by Tonika Lewis Johnson includes 10 life-sized land markers, a website documenting the homes and stories of residents, a podcast, and virtual walking tour that connects this history with present-day conditions. In the spring of 2022, Johnson and podcast co-host Tiff Beatty performed a live podcast for npr’s WBEZ Chicago, with graphics designed by Studio Brazen.
This project has received extensive media coverage:
Block Club Chicago, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Reader, Crain’s Chicago Business, WBEZ Chicago
At Home: Ephemeral Monuments for Public Housing Residents
At Home: Ephemeral Monuments for Public Housing Residents
Studio Brazen + National Public Housing Museum
Fall 2021
Home can mean many things to many people. It’s the place where you rest your head, the table where you eat family meals, it’s the place where we experience both pain and joyous celebration. These memories are the ordinary, everyday activities that make up life At Home.
At Home is a projection installation, which acts as an ephemeral monument for the everyday lives and stories of public housing residents.
Do monuments matter? Must they be forever carved in granite and steel? Who is worthy of monumentalization and who gets to decide?
At Home is an artistic attempt to address some of these questions through projections that will begin in Chicago at the last remaining building of the Jane Addams Homes and future home of the National Public Housing Museum. Stories are being collected and added to the At Home collection, and future versions of the monument with different stories will travel all over the United States at sites of significance to those who live or have lived in public housing.
36 Questions for Civic Love
36 Questions for Civic Love
Studio Brazen + National Public Housing Museum
Spring/Summer 2021
36 Questions for Civic Love began as a digital toolkit and has expanded to a nationally performed program. In 2021, I designed an outdoor interactive installation of the project for the San Francisco Urban Film Festival (SFUFF). Along with the installation, there was a virtual event with San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin and multimedia journalist Yesica Prado.
Cloth Face Mask Cards for CHA Residents
Cloth Face Mask Cards for CHA Residents
Design & Riso Printing
Studio Brazen + National Public Housing Museum
May 2020
As cases of COVID-19 spread throughout Chicago, those who were marginalized before began feeling it even more. Access to PPE was not being provided to folks living in public housing in Chicago. Studio Brazen + the National Public Housing Museum worked with Chicago-based artists and activists Alexandria Eregbu, and Mary Scott-Boria & Darthula Young, who sewed the masks as part of #MuseumsAtHome.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Lisa Yun Lee, the director of the National Public Housing Museum passed them out to residents. Each mask came with a card with the storied history of mask wearing in the US and instructions on how to safely wear and care for the mask.
The cards were printed at NEIU on the Art + Design Department’s risograph printer in three colors (pumpkin, cornflower, and black). Risograph printing is eco friendly, using rice-based ink, and works like a cross between screen printing and a xerox machine. Each color and side of the page is a separate run through the machine.
Looking Back: Chicago Design Milestones
Looking Back: Chicago Design Milestones
Exhibition Design & Branding
Chicago Design Archive (CDA)
Archeworks, 2019
In the first public event hosted by the CDA, this exhibit showcases highlights of the collection in Chicago Design Milestones. Developed in collaboration with the University of Illinois at Chicago and Columbia College Chicago, the Chicago Design Milestones installation visualizes the evolution of Chicago design by its examination and accentuation of historic characteristics of design works in the CDA collection over the last 10 decades.
Belonging: Place, Power, (Im)Possibilities Exhibition
Belonging: Place, Power, (Im)Possibilities Exhibition
Physical + Virtual Exhibition Design
Tonika Lewis Johnson / Chicago Justice Gallery
September 2020
Tonika Johnson chronicles the ways in which nine young people have been made to feel they don’t belong in their own city in a series of portraits and interviews. While Johnson’s portraits of young peoples’ experiences paint a grim picture of hierarchy, surveillance, entitlement and narrow mindedness, it is not a tale of defeat.
Through their own creative agency, young people push back against the politics of racism, exclusion and containment by creating their own “free spaces” and organizations that contest the commons.
In addition to the artwork, the exhibition features a mural by Joe “Cujodah” Nelson, scholarly research and an interactive map encouraging visitors to explore their own experiences with belonging and exclusion.
Due to COVID-19, both Johnson and Chicago Justice Gallery wanted to put out a virtual exhibition that made the content available to all. We developed an interactive parallax website, where visitors can scroll through portraits, listen to interviews, add content to the interactive map, and experience “alternative spaces” through a change in scrolling direction.
Experience the virtual exhibit
