Tony Coppoletta

@tonycoppoletta.com

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Likes food. And trains. And cities. Info designer in transit. Made in Chicago. (Personal acct) tonycoppoletta.com Also super pro-trans and anti-facisct because I'm a decent human being. He/him 🏳️‍🌈

Pink sprites over Wrigley Field in Chicago
A probably-condo building in the West Loop that got as finished as the main structure and incredibly stupid horse statues on the roof before the 2008 economic/real estate crash and sat abandoned for like ten years.
The sign on a Berlin U-Bahn station, track-side wall, that says "Rosenthaler Platz" (my best attempt at pronunciation, "HhhrrROsen tah-leh plAHts"). The orange tiles are actually colored as they are and slightly radioactive in the 2-5cm range due to a uranium glaze, not dissimilar from other things (like ceramic dinnerware) of the era also having been made with this element before it fell out of favor, for reasons.
The sign on an U-Bahn station, track-side wall, that says "Rosenthaler Platz" (my best attempt at pronunciation, "HhhrrROsen tah-leh plAHts"). The orange tiles are actually colored as they are and slightly radioactive in the 2-5cm range due to a uranium glaze, not dissimilar from things (like ceramic dinnerware) of the era also having been made with this element before it fell out of favor, for reasons.
Plucky pickle dip, a packet of Ritz crackers and a half-eaten trapezoid of "mousse de foie de canard au porto" (pork and duck liver mousse).
Very neatly zhooshed-up premium economy long-haul meal.
Brown bread, butter and beer (plus something else I forget).
Socks that match the seat pattern (moquette) on London's Elizabeth Line service.
An image looking out over Chicago's pre-dawn skyline from Uptown, with orange hues fading into space and a layer of grey cloud above the seemingly endless water of Lake Michigan.
A screenshot from Accuweather showing air quality. It's between poor and unhealthy around Lake Michigan (all adjacent states, like Wisconsin) and across southern Michigan and northern Illinois, and pushing east around the lake system into Toronto. There are also hotspots in the northeast like eastern Pennsylvania, Delaware and NYC, as well as a mass of poor air in the southeast including western Tennessee, Alabama, and presumably into Georgia (covered by the legend).
A FlightRadar24 map showing an unidentifiable helicopter hovering around Uptown/Edgewater/Lakeview after coming from west of the river, past downtown, over the Dan Ryan and Skyway and then spinning loops around South Shore and South Chicago neighborhoods, after starting from a site just south of the Calumet River.
A modern 65 Grand bus stop sign with the information hierarchy of route identification, direction, span of service and map.
A simplified exit sign at a new RPM station (Argyle), that uses plenty of negative space to make the sign more readable without breaking stride, featuring the bright "Out" patch, and the simplest possible text for readability and internationalization: "Argyle St, north side" and a pictogram of a bus (language agnostic) and the word "Buses" for those who can't perceive pictograms.
A view of the skyline glowing on a clear night from Uptown
A spectrum of sky, dotted with towers, from blue to red as dawn forms over Chicago's lakefront.
A series of odd shapes and warm colors with some stripes across it and a grainy watercolor on rough paper effect applied. It's hung above a bookshelf with a cylindrical lamp, some shiny objects and a boxy 60s-looking clock.
A Tube train tooting at me from a bridge overhead.
A series of Indian dishes from Dishoom
A jar of Pimento Hill mint jelly.
Porcelain china mugs, plates and bowls with sparks of blue and grey
A picture from the world famous Horse Meat Disco (resident London party, not the traveling version that pops up in cities like NYC and Chicago) showing their neon logo sign next to a sparkling disco ball.
My socks match the train seat moquette.
An evening photo of the Loop-bound platform at Pulaski Orange, just south of the south heat shelter.
The blur of an elevated train on a long-exposure shot with the Sears tower in the distance between the in-use and disused trackless outside track infrastructure at Schiller near Sedgwick.
Alec (Technology Connections) wearing a T-shirt with a CTA logo in a Patreon email promoting a charitable cause by Hank and John Green (Hank also, like me, is a cancer survivor who approached it with scientific curiosity and humility and it was so lovely to see that he, too, was kindred in dealing with it)!
A long exposure image of the night sky from Sturgeon Bay, WI, where among innumerous stars you can see the haze of the more distant clustered disc that our galaxy revolves around and why we call it "the milky way."
A perfect, verdant day overlooking uptown with a cerulean Lake Michigan in the distance under beautiful blue skies.
A Ventra card with the V pattern that starts with Black and brown and trans pride colors before shifting into classic pride colors, putting symbols of marginalized people first, even within the queer community.
An image of other recent work we've done, with the new Damen infill station on the Lake Street Elevated (Green Line service) with elegant, simple, easy-to-read signage that uses negative space and a consistent information hierarchy so people can find their way between paths at decision points without breaking stride. Less really is more in spaces where people are trying to keep moving!
The amazing and hilarious Graham Garfield hugging one of the screens he made happen in this project that I became a canvas I could build on his vision and add my own UX sensibilities to for what we're both super proud to have brought to Chicagoans and hope to expand!
Me in a CTA high-vis vest helping at an event to show appreciation to our riders with historic railcars--because when I'm not working, I'm volunteering.
Three screens at Argyle, one showing system status, another showing elevator outages, another showing service alerts.
A screen at Leytonstone station on the London Underground indicating delays on the Central line, which serves this station, that led to me having to wait for a second train because the first was too full. Thankfully not too long a wait, but I wasn't prepared for that at the time by not paying more attention to the details.
Newer New York City Subway digital signs showing arrivals, alerts and a system map as it operated at that time.
Two screens at 95th/Dan Ryan designed in the mid-20-teens, one to show scheduled train departures and alerts for all routes serving the station and another showing all bus departures and what stop letter(s) they depart from.
An older London ESUB that lists each line individually with a "good service" message to the right implying the whole system is fine, and showing an analog clock and some accessibility info below.
A London Underground "ESUB" showing delays across the Northern line but good service elsewhere at the Leytonstone station on the Central line.
An image showing the entrance to the new Argyle Red Line station with three screens, one showing normal service on all elevated lines, one showing a few elevator outages among the massive number CTA has across the system, and one showing any active or upcoming service alerts in place of paper alerts as a person enters the turnstiles. Arrival information is also showing overhead.
Chicago square-cut thin crust pizza
An Italian beef sandwich with hot giardinera, a chicken parm sandwich, green salad on a table in a garage with people around and a common Chicago alley as it would look within the city limits outside the Bungalow Belt, with garages and ranch houses in the background.
A temporary sign to indicate a bus stop is closed, with a little detail since the instruction from here is very simple--just walk a block south where the bus is still not on-reroute along with a rider alert on the pole and a "ROAD CLOSED AHEAD" sign in the distance. This is at Halsted/Grand.
A bagged bus stop sign near Broadway Market in East London in bright gold colors that is impossible to miss, with information duplicated below on the pole.
A CTA bright gold bus stop sign covered with a tarpaulin-like cover that says clearly, with a pictogram to indicate "no buses here" for someone who is unfamiliar with accompanied by large "bus stop closed" text telling people to check alerts. There is also a sturdy, long-term corrugated plastic alert on the pole with a map regarding the reroute of the #8 Halsted due to bridge reconstruction at Chicago avenue.
A photo of lake Michigan from a dune bluff on the eastern shore.
Shining reflections of the setting sun across the Chicago skyline from Uptown.
A view from an apartment looking over Chicago that includes everything from Uptown to the Western suburbs to downtown (skyline in a wedge of distance), and the southwest side where I grew up far on the edge of over the horizon where my mom, stepdad and sisters and nephews live, along with some cousins.
Plants growing out of a City of Chicago bus shelter roof where some amount of dirt and seed have settled to make it possible. A bus stop with a green roof.
A history card from the CTA pride train reads: Historical notes Finding community across the city Some of Chicago’s earliest queer community formed around the bohemian Towertown area (near Water Tower), the downtown Levee district and at South Side drag balls and cabarets. Notably, Finnie’s Halloween Ball, a legendary multiracial drag competition, began in the 1930s on the South Side and thrived for decades, gaining wide attention through publications who wrote about the event, such as Ebony. While North Side neighborhoods like Lakeview and Andersonville are now prominent LGBTQ+ hubs, people have connected and shared culture, art and ideas across the city. (Then, a pull-quote from Ebony Magazine reads:) “More than 1,500 spectators milled around outside Chicago’s Pershing Ballroom to get a glimpse of the bejeweled impersonators who arrived in limousines, taxis, Fords and even by streetcar.” –Ebony, 1953, regarding a Finnie’s Halloween Ball in transit-friendly Woodlawn
A car card that looks just like a regular route diagram as seen over the doors on any CTA car, except it says "cta Pride Train" where the route name would be with a rich pink background, and then the progressive pride color set including black, brown, trans colors and classic colors for the line segment between each "stop" which, when the route line read in order, says "Welcome aboard the cta where you're free to be your true self."
The 2018 Pride Train with a wavy pattern of the classic six pride colors and the words "Ride with pride!" below the window line as people exit the train at the Wilson station. Bonus detail: my partner and family are in the foreground since we were taking the Red Line together!
The Chicago Park District logo with its Latin motto inverting the city's!
The CTA Pride Train stopping at Wilson late last night.
Photo history in Glasgow
An excellent burrito
A picture of me with my "all aboard" shirt and "ride with pride" tote, that I designed, taken by an amazing colleague at work.