Chicago’s roots are grounded in architecture + design.

But our city’s growing portfolio of initiatives had an inconsistent look.

The city’s unrivaled character was getting lost.

We created the City’s first design system to express Chicago’s distinctive personality, giving its many entities one foundational look, streamlining communications, earning trust, saving Chicago millions of billable hours and millions of taxpayer dollars.

The Chicago Design System is a visual expression of the city’s core values of inclusivity, accessibility and transparency. We created it to reflect one of the city’s most distinctive assets, the Chicago flag, whose bars and stars symbolize major events and places in Chicago’s history. We gave the city’s many entities one foundational look. We made the Chicago Design System flexible, so the city’s growing portfolio of initiatives could speak with one voice. We left it wide open and downloadable so all Chicagoans could come in and play. The Chicago Design System streamlined communication, saved thousands of hours and millions of dollars as a tool used to share information quickly. We gave our city a way to inform, unify and move forward through the power of design.

The Chicago Design System was created from graphic elements that express our city’s distinctive history and personality. We used the stars, bars and colors of the iconic Chicago flag as its foundation. We developed a typeface to capture the spirit of the city.

Big Shoulders was inspired by Chicago’s world-famous skyline: strong, elegant, engineered. The N, M and W have extra wide Big Shoulders. The Chicago Star was also included as a character. We made this municipal typeface free and open source, the first of its kind. We left the system wide open and downloadable so everyday people could come in, add their logos, messaging, iconography and play. The Chicago Design System was the first of its kind to be executed with the intention of inclusivity. By codifying the history, emotion and values of our world-class city, we found a way to move Chicago forward by design.

Within the first two months, the Chicago Design System (CDS) streamlined Chicago’s communications. The simplified, unified design deployed across more than 200 municipal webpages, resulted in 33+ million pageviews and will be rolling out across another 200 this year. It was implemented just as a trusted brand was needed during the pandemic. It will reportedly save the City millions in staff time and resources.

Because the CDS captures the strength of Chicago’s municipal flag which has inspired company logos, fashion, and thousands of tattoos, it has already been elevated to use in political cartoons, protest posters, and merchandise on Etsy.

CDS is now used across every department’s print, digital, and OOH. The CDS will run in perpetuity across every City program. It is available for public use and is currently in consideration to be included in municipal code as the public mark for Chicago.