While known for its vibrant customization of cars, lowriding has a rich cultural history as a powerful American and Chicano urban art form. And in Chicago during Hispanic Heritage Month, that history took on urgent new relevance in the highly-anticipated annual Slow & Low: Chicago Lowrider Festival. Featuring new branding and designs by Span, the festival’s voice, message and mission embodied its importance as both a celebration and a symbol of resilience.

Lowriding traces back to 1940s U.S. car culture, with documented, post-war Mexican-Americans re-engineering their cars — reinforcing frames, wiring hydraulic systems, and chroming every inch of the engine bay — so that unlike hot rods built to run fast, their rides could glide “low and slow.” During the Chicano Movement in the 1970s, lowriders also took on a more formalized political function as a showcase for cultural pride. Since its inception in 2011, Slow & Low has celebrated this heritage, becoming the largest lowrider gathering in Chicago featuring over 250 customized cars, bicycles and motorcycles and 15,000 attendees from around the world.

In Span’s 4th year of designing for the festival, the studio looked to not only spotlight the customized car as a way of expressing beauty and self-expression by owners, but as a movement celebrating cultural pride at a time when national tensions have peaked. “Slow & Low has always been about community and inclusivity, so it was important that we design with authors, not about them – giving the community a seat at the table,” explains Span Associate Partner and Design Director Nick Adam. “But also, we weren’t blind to the current atmosphere of Latino marginalization – targeting people based on appearance alone. The question became: do we shrink, or do we shine? Lowrider culture is American culture. So, with Slow & Low’s curators, we chose to design a brand that embodied courage – not to hide, but to bloom.”

Fittingly, the brand returned to the influences that taught a generation how Chicano culture looked and read – with classic blackletter text softened with marker-drawn, rounded edges. However, in the newest designs, Span allowed nature to “overtake” the identity, with chains entwined with vines and four custom roses at distinct life stages threaded through wayfinding and other visuals.

“In lowrider culture, roses are a symbol of devotion, family, and faith. In Chicano traditions, they’re bound to love, remembrance of sacrifice, and through Spanish Catholic imagery, the Virgin Mary,” says Adam. “Slow & Low is multigenerational by design, so it’s common to see an infant cradled by a great-grandparent in the same club jacket. To honor that continuity for four-generations, we crafted four roses – bud to full bloom – so the process of life itself is represented.”

Span also worked to keep the visuals feeling newly alive – mimicking the hand-crafted look of ink on a page or colored-pens and pencils in a notebook. Blue and yellow lettering resembled an illustrative sunset reflected in chrome – an insider’s nod to Chicano and lowrider art and murals as well as the Chicago-style graffiti of the 1980s. This warmer approach offered the same scale as previous years, while giving the festival’s mix of families, clubs and performers clear moments of belonging.

This identity was used to turn the Chicago Navy Pier’s half-mile campus into a stage: including fifteen supergraphic walls – a popular festival landmark for selfies, family portraits, quinceañera poses and car club gatherings – as well as 1,000+ feet of banners, stage scrims for DJs and mariachis, pylons and column wraps as wayfinding, and other bilingual communications. There were also various branded merch – wristbands, plaques, posters, shirts, bandanas, and beverage koozies. The kids’ area even had Slow & Low ball pits.

“These designs don’t live in museums – they live on walls, shirts, and memories. When festival-goers raced to take home a sign at day’s end, it wasn’t theft, it was devotion. For Span, there’s no higher honor than designing a system that belongs to the people it was made for,” says Adam. “Being able to be part of this movement is a huge honor and responsibility, and we’re proud that our work over the last four years has played a part in supporting such a rich and meaningful lowriding history.”