Sharon Oiga & Daria Tsoupikova, Chicago Design Through the Decades

Sharon Oiga, Professor & Chair of Graphic Design, and Daria Tsoupikova, Professor of Digital Media Design and Co-Founder of the BS Computer Science + Design, along with Guy Villa Jr., were featured contributors to Chicago's Art on the Mart with the Chicago Design Through the Decades project.

Chicago Design Through the Decades is a 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.

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. 

For more information and full team credits, please visit Chicago Design Through the Decades.