CFBC is a monthly bar crawl, taking Chicago’s underground queers to different dives across the city. To communicate that vision, its visual language needed to be minimal, atmospheric, and borderline illegible (knowing that every asset would appear alongside a caption or alt text).
Every month is a different neighborhood and a different color scheme. Putting designs in a constant state of flux makes them hard to predict and pin down.
Processed, grainy, and over-compressed graphics set a clear tone: this bar crawl is for darkroom lurkers, not speakeasy yuppies. Eyesaw Fontz’s BeBop (1998) isn’t obvious and out in the open — it makes viewers squint and scratch their heads.
For each anniversary, the bar crawl distributes patches. The elongated shape fits neatly on a bar vest or denim jacket, and the stars on each side — a crossover of the Chicago flag and barbed wire — denote the number of years celebrated. It’s a physical memorial of queer culture that will survive long after its digital footprint has vanished.
