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Monday 9am - 5pm Tuesday 9am - 5pm Wednesday 9am - 5pm Thursday 9am - 5pm Friday 9am - 5pm

Span

Span is a studio crossing the boundaries of communication design in all mediums.

09/21/2026

What if design could change how healthcare itself works?

That question is at the center of the Institute for Healthcare Delivery Design.

IHDD is an innovation practice within UI Health Chicago’s only public academic health center. Its interdisciplinary team uses design to tackle some of healthcare’s most complex problems, working across research, public systems, and communities.
The scale is real. IHDD helped shape the vision for Illinois’ $1.15 billion Healthcare Transformation Collaboratives initiative, created to transform healthcare delivery in underserved communities.

At Span, our job was to give that practice an identity equal to its work.

A monospace logotype makes a long institutional name legible. Rounded forms multiply and connect. Color takes its cue from the Post-it note, a simple tool for iteration and collective thinking. Together, they form an identity designed less as a signature than a tool: something IHDD can use, adapt, and make its own.

Span design team:
Nick Adam concept, design direction, strategy, design
KEVIN MORELAND design, animation
taller.vale design

Deep thanks to Robert Zolna, Latrina Lee, Jenn Schiffman, Hugh Musick, and the teams at IHDD, UI Health, and the Office of Population Health Sciences for the trust, rigor, and collaboration.

08/17/2026

Brand work exists to create distinction. The handmade trend is helping everyone look the same.

New piece by John Pobojewski in Fast Company , on the hand-drawn type and rough textures spreading across identities right now. It reads as a reaction to AI more than an answer to any client’s actual problem.

We’ve seen this play twice before. Skeuomorphism started as a bridge to the first touchscreens and ended up on everything. Grunge typography borrowed the energy of zines without the reason for it. Good instincts, applied until they stopped meaning anything.

Craft still holds up when it comes from the work itself. Super Studio ® printed a bakery’s identity using the bakery’s own bread, so the texture was the product.

Link in bio.

06/01/2026

We are proud to share that Span’s design directors, , , and , have been included in this year’s Design 50.

Design in Chicago moves between disciplines, neighborhoods, communities, and scales. This recognition is a reminder of what makes Chicago design powerful: It is collaborative, practical, and ambitious. It shows up in culture, public life, institutions, neighborhoods, and the systems people use every day.

Deep thanks to , , Zach, , , and Nick Butcher, whose rigor, energy, and care elevate the work what it is.

Congratulations to everyone included. It means a great deal to be included alongside people whose work transforms this city we love. Thank you to Newcity.

04/10/2026

Heading into the weekend with a good one for you: our John Pobojewski is the latest guest on The Design Of Podcast from Rule29 Creative.

The conversation touches something we believe deeply at Span: design is not just what you make for clients. The practice itself is a design assignment—shaped, refined, and rethought over time.

As John puts it: “The business is also a design assignment. You’re constantly improving it and thinking about ways in which you can revise it. It’s not precious; it is in and of itself a living thing.”

A thoughtful listen on creativity, leadership, and building work that can adapt, endure, and matter.

02/04/2026

Some institutions help make a city known to itself.

For more than fifty years, the Reader has done that work with fearless reporting, curiosity, and a point of view you can spot across the street.

Span was honored to have and trust us with the evolution of the identity for the Reader’s next chapter.

For this work, we started where the Reader started.
In the archives.

We studied decades of mastheads, retypes, and small typographic decisions that shaped one of Chicago’s most recognizable marks, which has enlivened the city’s landscape for generations.

The centerpiece of our work is a careful redraw of the original Reader wordmark. Letter by letter. Optically refined. Corrected for balance. Rebuilt to live everywhere the Reader lives now, across print, digital, social, street boxes, and merch, while staying true to its history.

Thank you to the Chicago Reader for the years that built this legacy. Special thanks to for the collaboration, and to for the behind-the-scenes photos.

More soon. A full case study is on the way.

Address

650 West Lake Street
Chicago, IL
60661

Opening Hours

Monday	9am - 5pm
Tuesday	9am - 5pm
Wednesday	9am - 5pm
Thursday	9am - 5pm
Friday	9am - 5pm

Website

http://span.studio/

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