Designing a Better Chicago is an annual celebration, for residents and visitors alike, that shines a light on the extraordinary impact of design on civic life. The program also supports local individuals and organizations using the power of design to advance social good through its Design Impact Grant.

The effort is a collaboration between theMART, NeoCon, DCASE and the Design Museum of Chicago. The team reached out to us looking for a thoughtful visual identity to build awareness and enthusiasm. Together, we developed a thoroughly contemporary system that is deeply rooted in Chicago’s history of design excellence.

To develop the logo, we discovered inspiration in the—overlooked—Chicago’s municipal device. An iconic symbol that hides in plain sight throughout the city, it references the 19th-century engineering feat of reversing the flow of the Chicago River. The linear forms provide a pared down yet meaningful foundation for the entire visual system.

Nick Losacco’s Telegraf (Pangram Pangram, 2020) is uses throughout.

Collaborating with Chicago’s famed Merchandise Mart and BIFMA (the trade association for business and institutional furniture manufacturers), One Design developed a positioning strategy and brand system for Confluence Chicago™, a new programming track for NeoCon 2020 (now slated to 2021) focused on bringing together creative practitioners from across multiple modes of design.

The creative process can be mysterious. But peek below the surface, and you’ll find universal truths that unite us all—unexpected lessons to be learned, unique perspectives to be shared, and novel approaches to be taken that could benefit us all.

Confluence Chicago™ is a three-day creative summit that allows participants to connect across creative industries and design disciplines to discover, explore, and find inspiration in the common threads that unite our work.

A vibrant, fresh, and contemporary design system was developed to attract and connect with a younger audience—pulling away from the corporate traditions of NeoCon’s past. A bespoke, modular typeface rounded out the system—embracing the concept of unification across multiple modes of creative practice to create surprising, unexpected results.

Type specimen for Elbow Sans.