Chicago: Familiar Yet Foreign
Throughout the past week I have been walking around Chicago, Illinois in order to immerse myself in the various environments I will be a part of for the next four years in college. An immersion week if you will. To me an immersion week is getting to know the ecosystem around you when moving to a new place. Remembering places you’ve been, and how to get back there is also important. But most importantly, it means becoming familiar with the cultures that inhabit every corner of this beautiful city that 2,687,682 people call home.
This first photo I took was of the John Hancock building as seen from Lake Shore Drive which is already a glorious view, the clouds obstructing the top make it look almost ominous in nature. As the third tallest building in the city, the John Hancock building is one of many tall beacons in Chicago, it stands out with the Willis tower and Trump Tower along the city’s beautiful skyline. When we went up to the 360 view-floor of the John Hancock, we were able to see every part of the city; it was magnificent the way all the buildings almost blend together and the cars and people look miniature. You get an entirely new perspective on the city seeing it from that height, because normally you see the city from the ground level where the buildings all lurk over you like giant metal golems. But when you’re up in the 360 view, you end up towering over most of the buildings, and you can see for miles on a clear day. As a suburbanite to the Chicago area, I seldom went to the John Hancock center when I was younger. My family always took me to see other attractions when we were in the city. But now that I’m older, I have found a new appreciation for the scale of the city, how grand and vast it is.
This next picture is of a shop I saw when we were walking around Lincoln Park, and I saw this logo for a visual design shop and I just had to take a picture of it because I’m majoring in graphic design, so I’m always looking for interesting logos for inspiration. It’s design choices like this that can really tell you a lot about a company. And it’s not just this company in particular, many companies around Chicago have interesting and unique logos. Everywhere you look around the city is just bursting with personality and character. Graphics really add to a city’s flair and appeal, because one of the main ways you get someone to come to your shop is by having an eye-catching, memorable logo.
This picture is of a sculpture that we came across on our walk around Lincoln park. It’s a very abstract sculpture, but without it and many others like it, Chicago would be a very different, more dull place to live.
Being a suburbanite, it was a little daunting coming to a new big city. Coming to and from there when I was younger was one thing. Actually living here is a whole other beast. While I’m already starting to adjust to living here, I have not yet begun to adjust to the many cultures that I am going to be exposed to, but these walks I have taken with my class have given me a peek into some other interesting cultures that inhabit this great city.
