There is an actual “Chicago” typeface—that sans-serif abomination designed for Apple computers in 1984. Remember your first-gen iPod? That 50 Cent song you listened to on repeat was rendered in Chicago.
The first newspaper mention of typography found by the History Museum staff wasn’t until 1949, and apparently it didn’t take long for the city suits of old to start bickering publicly over a “standard design for all civic lettering,” including slant strokes, line thickness, and whether the n and d in “Randolph” ran too closely together. “Chicago’s leading authority on lettering thinks the city’s street signs are ‘atrocities,’ ” the Trib reported in August of that year.
