Daria Tsoupikova, Sharon Oiga and Guy Villa Jr.

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 3,200 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 approach that formed the foundation of much of modern artificial intelligence (AI) technologies becoming increasingly prevalent today 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.

The full Chicago Design Through the Decades team includes:

• Daria Tsoupikova, UIC School of Design & Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL)
• 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, Northeastern Illinois University & Chicago Design Archive
• AI/ML visualization by Fabio Miranda, UIC Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL)
• Music by Louis Schwadron, Sky White Sound
• Plus vocalist/activist Nnelolo Karen Wilson-Ama’Echefu and rapper Elijah Robb

Since 2003, the Chicago Design Archive has been the premiere and permanent online record featuring Chicago-related experiential design, graphic design, and product design created from the 1920s to the present. It is a collection of historically important design as well as a living, growing record of the vibrant Chicago design scene.

The mission of the CDA is to preserve significant works of the past, to augment the collection with vital new works, and to showcase the best of Chicago design through publication, exhibition, and other programming.

The Chicago Design Archive began as a collection of nearly 900 slides of exemplary work produced between 1920 and 2002. That collection, shown at the Society of Typographic Arts’ seventy-fifth anniversary celebration, has grown through contributions of personal collections, selections by the CDA board and curators, and by juries of the STA-sponsored annual Archive competitions.