NOW MORE THAN EVER
Five billboards across Illinois,
2026
Five Billboards,
Nothing to Sell
A billboard gets about one second of your attention. This fall, five of them across Illinois are giving that second back, an estimated two million times.
NOW MORE THAN EVER is a series of five typographic artworks on view in Will County, Champaign, Springfield, Macomb, and East Dubuque from September 28 through October 25, 2026. Each board carries a single phrase in towering black letters on a field of bright color, with no logo, no phone number, and nothing for sale. Together, they reach more than 500,000 people a week.
I've spent my career putting words on walls. A billboard is the same idea moving at seventy miles an hour. You get one second with someone you'll never meet, and I wanted that second to be kind.
The Five Boards
DREAM TOO BIG, Will County, along I-80. Chicago has never known how to dream small. It reversed the flow of its own river, rebuilt itself taller after it burned, and gave the world House music. Daniel Burnham told the city to make no little plans, and it listened. This board stands at the edge of the Chicago region in letters too big to fit their own frame.
HERE'S TO ADVENTURE, Champaign. Every August, a kid from a small town walks into a lecture hall holding more people than her whole hometown. Down the hall, someone is the first in their family to go to college. Someone is calling home every night, and someone has forgotten to. This board is a toast to all of them, and to the bravest thing most of us ever do: pack the car and go.
THE BEST IS AHEAD, Springfield. On a rainy February morning in 1861, Abraham Lincoln stood on the back of a train in Springfield and said goodbye to the neighbors he had lived among for a quarter century. He was leaving for Washington and a country coming apart, with no way of knowing what waited for him. He told them anyway that he hoped all would yet be well. This board stands in the city he left, holding the same hope.
BE HERE NOW, Macomb, U.S. Highway 67, one mile north of town. Woodford grew up in Macomb. Coming home from college, he first heard a Mason Jennings song called "Be Here Now," and by the time he reached town, everything else went quiet. It still does. The board greets everyone on 67 in the gold of Western Illinois University, and joins WHAT YOU FEED WILL GROW, his permanent mural at the Western Illinois Museum.
SHARE YOUR LIGHT, East Dubuque. Anyone who has sat around a summer camp fire knows the moment when one flame lights the next and the dark gets a little smaller. Light is the one thing you can give away and still keep. In East Dubuque, on the Illinois bank of the Mississippi, the sun sets across the water every evening and lights both shores at once. The board asks the rest of us to do the same.
Why Now
The series takes its name from the reason behind it. Everybody I know is carrying something heavy right now. These five boards are my way of riding along with them for a mile.
Anyone who spots a board is invited to photograph it and share it by tagging @TannerWoodford or using #NowMoreThanEver.
The boards come down October 25, 2026. The words are meant to stay a little longer.
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Tanner Woodford acknowledges support from the Illinois Arts Council.
