Chicagood is an online magazine launched by The Chi-Town Project. It is a magazine for social conscious Chicagoans that focuses on social awareness issues and those who step up to make Chicago a better place for tomorrow. We also like to have fun and celebrate what it means to be Chicagoan and what is good in our city. Be Chicagood.
We love saying that we live in the greatest city in the world. The beautiful skylines, innovative monuments and strong-willed spirits that dwell within the city gives us more reason to boast about Chicago’s greatness. However, as we progress into a rapidly changing future, many of our great city’s downfalls become glaringly obvious as we strive to become a world class city. Poverty, corruption, education and gang violence are only few of the many social awareness issues that have surfaced within Chicago’s inner walls.
That’s where The Chi-Town Project steps in. We serve as a platform of fresh ideas, as a series of projects with the ability to ignite passion, discussion and action among Chicagoans for the greater good. Together we can strive for one ultimate goal: guiding Chicago to a better tomorrow. As a curation of social goodness, we celebrate not only the city’s identity but also the achievements that define what makes Chicagood.
Join us as we inspIre. dreAM. aCHIeve.
Are you familiar with tiltshift photography? It’s a pretty cool technique that allows the photographer to capture anything and making them appear miniature! WGN has a pretty sweet collection for your enjoyment of Chicago! We love it!
A very special Ford Explorer rolled out of the Chicago assembly line. It’s a Ford made of 380,000 Lego bricks! Its destination is the Legoland in Florida. That’s awesome!
This has been around since Christmas of ’11, but DENG is this awesome. A beautiful animation of Luol Deng throwing down some authority. Continue Reading →
Awhile back we’ve talked about Steve Shanabruch and his awesome The Chicago Neighborhoods project where he will be tackling each and every one of Chicago’s neighborhoods and be giving them a logo.
You can’t applaud Steve without applauding Chris. Chris of StudioChris is also tackling each of Chicago’s neighborhoods but will be doing a poster that represents an iconic landmark of that particular neighborhood. Now that’s Chicagood!
Nike has been known for some bold and daring uniform designs of late. So when the NFL announced that they will be passing the torch from Reebox to Nike as the uniform provider for the NFL, many held their breathes.
Luckily for Chicago, Nike decided to play it safe and make a nod to the classic Bears look. The redesigned uniforms makes subtle changes. The most obvious being the material and numbers moving up much higher onto the shoulders because the sleeves are shorter. It’s nice to see Chicago keeping its history in tact and representing its roots. There won’t be too many doing so as many of the uniforms have gotten bolder and more modern looks.
No alternate uniforms have been announced and who knows what Nike may have up its sleeves.
Google has provided beautiful maps for many of our devices. But they’ve missed out on our favorite NES system. Fear not. Google has worked hard to bring us google maps for the NES system with beautiful 8 bit graphics. Retro is in and Chicago looks great!
Oh, and Happy April Fools Day.
We love Chicago in all sorts of weather. In the sun, in the cloud, in the rain, in the dark and in the fog.
This past Sunday on March 25th, Craig Shimala captured some beautiful foggy afternoon shots of Chicago. Check it out!
Today is a special day for Chicago and designers. Today would be Mies van der Rohe’s 126th Birthday. Mies van der Rohe is arguably one of the most influential designers for me and many other designers. Pioneer of the modern design style of architecture, Mies left many lasting legacies right here in Chicago where he lived the later part of his life. After escaping his home country of Nazi ruled Germany, he settled in Chicago and would later design several would be landmarks and iconic architectural designs. From his Illinois Institute of Technology architecture program and campus design, to his IBM building in the Loop and to his post office design in the loop, Mies contributed much to Chicago’s cityscape and atmosphere.
Steve Shanabruch is a designer from Chicago. He loves both, so he decided to bring them together into an ambitious but awesome project, called The Chicago Neighborhoods. Steve will be branding every one of Chicago’s 77 neighborhoods with a logo. He plans to release one every Monday, Wednesday and Friday until he covers them all.
He describes the project as, “One designer’s take on Chicago.” My vision might not match yours, but I hope that we can agree that a neighborhood with a logo is better than a neighborhood without.
“Buy a Shoe, Build a Community.”
If you haven’t heard about the latest and hottest social conscious footwear that’s headquartered right here in Chicago, listen up cause these guys are getting our stamp of approval of being Chicagood!
We love looking down at Chicago from our plentiful rooftop views. It offers some amazing views and angles that you can’t find elsewhere. Apparently someone loves it much more than us and dedicated a tumbler blog just for Chicago from the Roof views. Armed with a simple Samsung Galaxy S2 this Chicagoan sure does capture some amazing shots!
Now this is awesome. Matt Bergstrom has released a bunch of new paper models of Chicago for his awesome Build Your Own Chicago series.
Build Your Own Chicago is a series of postcards printed to scale and published by Wurlington Press which can be cut and assembled into miniature paper models of prominent Chicago landmarks. All postcards are designed and drawn by Matt Bergstrom.
Chicago is the home of some of the best architecture in the world. There’s no doubt about it. Chicago has always been at the forefront in great architecture and now The Chicago Architectural Foundation has launched a free online tool for aspiring young architects and designers.
Everyone is jumping on Pinterest. It is quickly becoming one of the bigger social networking sites almost overnight. Its unique and intuitive interface allows for neat interactions and uses. Many shops and bloggers are taking to Pinterest. One of the more noteable forces to join on Pinterest is the Art Institute of Chicago. You can see some of the curated galleries from the AIChicago.
We like infographics. Especially when it’s about Chicago. Check out this sweet infographic Shop Autoweek made for the history of the autoshow. Just in time for the autoshow!
You may see it everyday and not think much about it, but the CTA signage are classic and are some examples of beautiful typography. The CTA “L” signages are a modification of the original 1969 design, known as the “Kennedy-Dan Ryan” signage. It is set in the beloved Helvetica typeface and color-coded to match the eight corresponding “L”‘ lines.
UPDATE: It appears now the runner up, Caitlin Henehan whose design elevated to the 1st place after the City sticker fiasco has pulled her design because of “unwanted media and public scrutiny and criticism of her artwork that soon followed,”. Now the city is forced to design the sticker in house. The city stickers are still scheduled to be distributed on time.
In a city wide art contest aimed at highlighting children’s artistic abilities to be placed on the City stickers, you would expect happiness and hope and inspirations. But at the end of the day it delivered a crushing blow to one troubled teen’s spirits. And nobody came out a winner.
Chicago no doubt has a surging craft beer scene that has just exploded in the recent years.
One that definitely stood out from the rest is Few Spirits, a craft distillery, located in Evanston, Illinois. They offer premium small-batch spirits made entirely on-premises from grain to bottle.
The Navy Pier redesigns were revealed at the Museum of Contemporary Arts. There were some big and bold plans. With a modest budget of $85 million, the beloved and biggest midwest attraction that draws some 8.6 million visitors a year is planning to go through a major renovation.