One designer's attempt to create a logo for each of Chicago's seventy-seven community areas, and a few of the more well-known neighborhoods in between. [more inside]
posted by dinty_moore on Jan 23, 2012 - 33 comments

In the 1970s and 1980s, Chicago gangs distributed gang cards to stake their neighbourhood claim. Full gallery available here.
posted by gman on Jan 20, 2012 - 44 comments

Typographic Maps. "These unique maps accurately depict the streets and highways, parks, neighborhoods, coastlines, and physical features of the city using nothing but type."
posted by jacquilynne on Oct 14, 2010 - 32 comments

Chicago Welcomes You "How to redesign a resettlement process for immigrants who may never have seen a streetlight, cooked on a stove, used a toilet that isn’t a hole in the ground or handled any type of currency." More about the project.
posted by ocherdraco on Dec 4, 2009 - 12 comments

President Obama pencil topper. Olympic Mayor Daley. Parachuting Rod Blagojevich.(Acrobat PDF) Mayor Daley Parking Meter.(Acrobat PDF) Paper sculptures by illustrator and animation artist Joe Fournier.
posted by mattdidthat on Aug 2, 2009 - 4 comments

When you're an aiga member they send you e-mail, I usualy don't read them, because they're accouncements of conferences and such, but this one was about Chicago enlisting the help of AIGA to design new election ballots. 'Some possibilities for making Chicago ballots more user-friendly include enlarging candidates' names, changing the font size, altering the color of pages, making wider ballot booklets.' Since I couldn't find the article on-line, I'll just cut-n-paste the e-mail inside. :)
posted by tiaka on Dec 2, 2000 - 8 comments

Chicago to enlist graphic designers for friendlier ballots. [free reg may be req'd] There's been a bunch of discussion about the usability problems with various voting systems, notably punch-card ballots. Chicago didn't have anything as dramatic as a "butterfly" prexy ballot or two pages' worth of candidates, but we still had close to 120,000 discards from 2.1 million votes -- and when compared with jurisdictions using other systems, there's little evidence to suggest that voters are skipping the presidential ballot. That's just how bad manual punch card technology is. Even if we can't get rid of them just yet, at least we can make sure they aren't confusing. Did I just post the twenty-sixth link on Metafilter today? GO AWAY. METAFILTER IS FULL. :)
posted by dhartung on Nov 29, 2000 - 24 comments