Chicago’s contemporary art scene is shaped by artists working across mediums, neighborhoods, and communities. Some are widely recognized. Others are emerging. Together, they form a constantly evolving portrait of the City and the people making it.

Pentimenti, a production company and arts nonprofit, created 4×4: Contemporary Art in Chicago to capture that moment in motion. Each season pairs four artists with four filmmakers, producing short documentaries as distinctive as the people who make them. The result is not just a story about Chicago, but a collection of perspectives connected by place, practice, and time

To support a program built around artistic exchange, Span developed an identity system rooted in motion and the structure of the series itself. A bespoke 4×4 mark transforms the relationship between artist and filmmaker into a frame-based visual system of numeral, multiplier, and divider. Constructed from a monoline, monospaced vocabulary, each element shares the same visual DNA, creating a language of interchangeable parts capable of growing alongside the films.

Inspired by the mechanics of filmmaking, these forms expand into a graphic language of edits, sequences, timelines, and containers. Across posters, title sequences, social media, and motion graphics, the system frames an expanding collection of artists and stories while remaining unmistakably 4×4.

Working exclusively in rich-black and off-white allows the films to become the sole source of color and light within the system. As title sequences give way to footage, audiences move from the framework of the series into the unique world of each artist.

Rather than define the films through a singular aesthetic, the identity creates the conditions for many voices to coexist. As new artists, filmmakers, and stories enter the program, the identity continues to grow—a platform for an expanding archive of Chicago creativity.