© 2006 Coleman Partners.
All rights reserved.
The Illinois Tollway maintains more than 100 miles of roadway in the Chicago area. In 2004, plans were announced to convert the Tollway to "Open Tolling," a system intended to increase the use of I-Pass electronic toll collection devices and reduce traffic congestion. Coleman Partners was hired to create an updated logo for the Tollway and develop road signs to help motorists negotiate redesigned toll plazas.
The Illinois Tollway maintains more than 100 miles of roadway in the Chicago area. In 2004, plans were announced to convert the Tollway to "Open Tolling", a system intended to increase the use of I-Pass electronic toll collection devices and reduce traffic congestion. Coleman Partners was hired to create an updated logo for the Tollway and develop road signs to help motorists negotiate redesigned toll plazas.
On the left is the logo the Tollway had been using for decades. On the right is the new logo we created. In between are four focus groups, 13 meetings and 250 hours of graphic design.
Here is one of our early logo concepts. As you can see, it uses a stylized map of Illinois to convey specificity of context. If you don't know what we mean by specificity of context, you are not alone.
This particular logo treatment extends the horizontal elements of the "I" to form an elegant framing device for the rest of the type. From now on, we will refer to these elements as "the amazing super wonder bars."
In this iteration, the lines in the logo begin to resemble a more stylized take on roadway markings, suggesting grace, fluidity and unimpeded flow. Or, if you are the guy in the blue shirt in the third focus group, they suggest tire treads. Thanks a lot, pal.
Here is it. Note the bold, confident lines, the insouciance of the slim white swoosh, the impudent blue dot where a plain and staid dash should be. Yes, it's something each Illinois motorist can be proud of, as they speed past at 70 or 80 miles an hour.
Wait a minute... that's not a real toll plaza! But if it were, we'd all be driving around in cartoon cars, which would be awesome.
The black arrow thing on the sign is really important and took a lot of time to perfect. Each time you go through a toll plaza without crashing, you can thank us.
In early 2006, Coleman Partners was selected to write and design the Tollway's 2005 Annual Report, which was eventually titled "It's About Time." The title is what the French refer to as a "double entendre," which means it has two intentions. The first is to let you know that the Tollway is dedicated to reducing travel times for motorists. The second is to let you know that it is about damn time for some travel time reduction.
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Think of the time you spend in traffic.
Your morning commute, your evening commute.
Add it up.
What does it come to, each day?
Each week? Each year?
Now imagine you could have some of that time back.
Imagines someone handed you a box, and inside was time.
What would you do with it?
This section contains letters from the Governor (on the left) and the Chairman and Executive Director of the Tollway (on the right). In an admirable moment of candor, one of the letters puts the Tollway's recent successes in perspective: "We wish we could tell you that you'll never spend another moment stuck in traffic. Unfortunately, we can't make that promise. But we can tell you that we're working hard so you can spend less time getting where you're going, and more time being where you want to be."
This spread serves as an overview of the Tollway's successes in 2005.
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In record time, the Congestion-Relief Program is already improving customers' lives by reducing travel times. This year's projects include the rebuilding and widening of sections of I-294 and I-88, Open Road Tolling and commencement of construction of the I-355 South extension.
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A road is just pavement. It doesn't think or feel. It doesn't care where you're going or how long it takes you to get there. When it cracks or erupts in potholes, you can repair it. But you can't make it care about the community it cuts through or the motorists who drive it. For that you need people, and that's where the Tollway comes in.
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Traditionally, there have been two ways to do roadway construction. The first is to work incrementally, closing one lane at a time, which causes less inconvenience for motorists but slows construction to a snail's pace. The second way is to close multiple lanes at the same time, wreaking havoc with motorists' commutes, but getting the project done as quickly as possible. As you might imagine, neither of these options was acceptable to us.
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It's not just muscle and machinery that make our progress swift. A lot of brainpower is involved too. While the rubblizer allowed us to rehab 32 miles of road in only five months, we also created performance-based specifications for the construction project that allowed the contractor to reduce his design time from the standard one year to a mere 45 days.
In 2006, the second full year of Congestion-Relief construction, you will be experience additional reductions in travel times. Open Road Tolling will be completed, which means that if you have an I-PASS transponder, you will be able to travel the entire length of the Tollway system at highway speed. No more tollbooths.
This section of the Report details a variety of services now available to Tollway motorists, including online I-PASS account management, a beefed-up Illinois State trooper presence, emergency H.E.L.P. trucks and seven new oases that feature a wider variety of restaurants and other businesses.
This is the budget section. It contains numbers and a very clever chart that is kind of like a pie chart but not as filling. Let's call it a donut chart, shall we? What you will learn from this chart is that the Tollway did its job without going over budget. On the right is a map of the entire Tollway system. It's a very extensive system. All of the amazing improvements discussed in the annual report were completed for $630 million.