Second City Packages

The 27 Chicago Designers organization was founded in 1936 (and celebrated its 80th anniversary in 2016) to promote the work of its wide range of members—illustrators, typographers, photographers and designers. Important founders were type designers Oswald Cooper and R. Hunter Middleton.

“These designers,” notes the introduction to the group’s first catalog, “have come together not to form an organization, but to produce work representative of the creative ability to be found in the graphic arts in Chicago. Each designer planned and produced his own insert, and positions in the book were determined alphabetically.” It goes on to say that “in earlier days the Church, the kings and emperors were the patrons of artists and designers. Today business has this privilege.”

These catalogs are mini-swaths of modern commercial design history. The work presented below represents some of those 3D designers who have gotten lost over time and geography. The work held its own against anything coming out of New York and Los Angeles.