For my fellow political nerds out there, I wanted to share this font and some background! This year, each state has a special legislative session to redraw their Congressional districts based on the demographic information from the US Census in 2020. Gerrymandering occurs when these districts are drawn to give a certain political party a clear, unfair advantage. Oftentimes, gerrymandering results in some wonky-looking districts — so wonky, in fact, that they may look like letters of the alphabet. After realizing that a nearby district in Illinois kind of looked like the letter ‘U’ in 2019, Chicago designers Ben Doessel and James Lee created Gerry, a font made out of the shapes of mangled congressional districts. I have yet to use it in real life, but it’s pretty fun to play with, as well as an interesting statement at the intersection of politics and design.
Read more about their process here, and download Gerry!
