Welcome to flatmade.
chicago has a great lake: This is where our story begins.
Browsing through the Museum of Modern Art’s collection, I discovered this poster and fell in love. chicago has a great lake was created by John Massey for Container Corporation of America as part of its Chicago Cultural Communication Project. I knew I had to have one. Failing in the quest to obtain a poster from the original 1966 printing, I approached Mr. Massey with the idea of printing a new edition. To my delight, he agreed.
It was not to be as easy as I had hoped. First, I had to track down the rights to the designs (lawyer, lawyers, lawyers). Then it started to get fun. I logged plenty of miles, tracking down some of the original designers. With their help and collaboration, I was able to recreate the entire suite of posters. In addition, I was given lessons in design that rival my years of formal education. Finally, I had to find a printer that could match the brilliance of the original serigraphs. I found someone to handle the challenge at Communications Imprimées Bellemare, located in Montreal. The first offerings will be John Massey’s chicago has a great lake alongside another classic, John Rieben’s chicago the town that van der rohe built. We will produce each design in a numbered edition of 100.
Soon we will be releasing other prints from this iconic series, as well as other carefully-selected masterpieces from the history of design. In addition, we will have curated works from today's up-and-coming designers.
It has been an adventure bringing these designs back to life and I look forward to sharing them with lovers of design around the world.
Let’s discover design together.
Please email us with any questions or comments.