Designers

Karl Peter Koch was a commercial artist who specialized in package design. Koch was born on December 25, 1900 in St. Marys, Ohio. His father Charles William Koch (1873–1939) was the son of John Mathias Koch, from Germany, and Mary Miller, from…

Charles Clarence Dawson is significant for his many contributions to illustration, design, and fine art during the “Chicago Black Renaissance” of the interwar period and beyond. The “Great Migration,” which refers to the relocation of large numbers…

The architectural firm of Keck & Keck, established by brothers George Fred and William, was one of the most innovative architectural firms in Chicago best known for buildings such as the House of Tomorrow for the Century of Progress Exposition of…

Founded in 1907, the Cuneo Press was one of Chicago’s largest printing companies, second only to the R.R. Donnelley & Sons. Its founder John F. Cuneo, Sr. was the third generation in his wealthy family to flourish as a Chicago businessman. His…

A 1937 newspaper series called “Women at Work” narrates the story of how Helen Hughes Dulany started her design career: during the Great Depression, Dulany was compelled to economize and reluctantly dismissed her butler. Regretting her decision, she…

Douglas Crawford McMurtrie was a nationally renowned typographer, bibliographer, and authority on the history of printing. Over the course of his career, McMurtrie advised on the typographical redesigning of hundreds of newspapers and contributed to…

Twenty-Seven Chicago Designers was a membership organization founded in 1936 by a group of twenty-seven graphic designers, typographers, and illustrators with the goal of promoting their design talent to commercial businesses. The group publication…

Chicago pharmacist and physician Wallace Calvin Abbott (1857–1921) founded the Abbott Alkaloidal Company in 1900. The medical business, renamed Abbott Laboratories in 1915, started with the success of Abbott’s alkaloid pills that he produced in his…