Bryan Moats Design Portfolio - 2017

A rich texture of information Design portfolio

from

MOATS

Client: Arkansas Times

2012-2017 Musicians Showcase design For five years I managed the print and web campaigns of the annual Musicians Showcase contest put on

by Arkansas Times. This included all web and print advertisements, social media art, t-shirts and more.

For most years under my art direction,* all visual design would fall under my jurisdiction. This includes working closely with sponsors like Bonnaroo. Each year included an event website, of which 2014-2017 were responsive.

The design followed a loose story arc, depicted in the poster designs below.

2012: Our nameless, faceless, and

2013: Having lost to a scruffy

2017: …four years later, the two

in fact, invisible hero, First Rodeo,

group of freegan hippies from

members of First Rodeo run into

a clean cut minimalist rock duo

Russellville, First Rodeo disbands,

each other at a music store, staring

out of Cabot, practices for their

but not before hurling their

at a wall of instruments. Their

big debut at the Showcase.

instruments off the Junction

wounds have mostly healed and

Bridge into the Arkansas River.

they resolve to enter the 2017 Musicians Showcase. On their way

2014-2016: What followed First

to the practice space they debate

Rodeo’s graceless loss? They both

the absence of an apostrophe

disappeared from each other’s lives

in ‘musicians’ and rename the

and coincidentally relocated to two

band The Second Coming.

spots along the Buffalo River, a mere 1,000 feet from each other’s camps. Both rapidly fell into a hog waste runoff fueled psychosis.

(See art for the 2015 Showcase for

* Full disclosure, I opted out of designing the

evidence of this) That is until…

2016 Musicians Showcase materials because of creative differences with the event organizer.

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2013

2014

2015

2017

A collection of web, print deliverables from four of my favorite years.

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Client: Arkansas Education Association

E3 Professional Development Conference 2017 marks my third year creating all materials for the three-day professional development conference from the Arkansas Education Association. Deliverables include responsive website, conference program, Rozzell lecturer program, conference signage, social media materials, online workshop registration forms, and more.

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The AEA is an advocate to the government for public schools in Arkansas. They came to me looking for someone who could make information about their annual conference clear and easy to access, registering workshops an actual fun experience, and importantly, make the conference look “sexy.�

Teachers and school staff come from across Arkansas, a state like so many others crowded with overworked and underpaid staff, so directions and accommodations, workshop schedules, and the benefits of traveling to join in the conference needed to be quickly accessible to potential guests.

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Client: Out in Arkansas/Bryan Moats

No Sorrow: art/design project benefiting Out in Arkansas Not long before the Pulse Nightclub shooting in Florida Lindsey Millar, editor of Arkansas Times, had begun making plans to launch Out in Arkansas, the state’s first print and web publication dedicated to LGBTQ news and culture.

After the shooting, I created No Sorrow, a series of designs to be sold as prints and apparel. 100% of the profits have gone to funding the launch of the publication.

The initial idea was well received so we decided to explore more possibilities, given the potential for interesting patterns and symbolism.

There are now six different arrow patterns and variations available.

We have also have a two sided, seven color screen print in the works called ‘Three Arrows’. One side displays the cutting guides and instructions for assembly of three arrows and accompanying wall brackets. The opposite side is a maze of colorful shapes that make up the surface of the assembled arrows.

The series started with this piece, which was a continuation of a long running personal project called Square Circle Triangle.

Side note: My Square Circle Triangle project was not originally inspired by Bruno Munari’s book of the same name.

Now however, in my mind at least, it is.

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Three Arrows: the owner can assemble all three arrows or keep the prints uncut to display as-is.

1 - ‘Arrows 3’ phone case 2 - ‘Arrows 5’ phone case 3 - ‘Arrows 2’ art print 4 - ‘Arrows 7’ women’s t-shirt 5 - ‘Arrows 1’ pattern

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Client: Rinc贸n Beer Company

Rinc贸n Beer Company logo Naomi and Sage Hobbs hired me in 2012 to create the identity for their new brewery and bar in Rinc贸n, Puerto Rico. Deliverables included simply the logo, business cards and basic branding guidelines and color system. More recently I was hired to plan designs for frosted store front windows as they grew into their popular space.

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In addition to being a popular tourist location, the capital city of Rinc贸n is a tight community of friends, family, coworkers and avid surfers. It is also the home of the decommissioned Boiling Nuclear Superheater (BONUS) Reactor prototype, a distinctive dome shaped facility.

We saw an opportunity to cross pollinate the dual legacies of a surfing destination and historic testing grounds of an ultimately unsuccessful nuclear technology.

In the end, aside from holding on to the sea foam reactor dome color variations, we downplayed the nuclear aspect and relaxed the overall vibe by roughing it up and playing up the chill factor and incorporated three of the Puerto Rico flag colors (red, orange and yellow.)

Early roughs focusing heavily on the surfing aspect but not yet reflecting the chill factor quite right.

These three early ideas referenced the BONUS plant directly but ultimately did not reflect the character of local scene well.

Last year the Hobbs contacted me to lay out frosted window designs for their location. This is a mocked up version. (Due to a death in the business family, I believe the window frosting project is on hold.)

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Client: Two-Twelve Bagels

Two-Twelve Bagels Logo The owners of Two-Twelve Bagels are even now still refining their wildest cream cheese recipes and ensuring a consistently perfect crispto-chew ratio* before they open, so you could say they got on their logo game early.

* That may not be the way they said it.

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Wes Howerton of Two-Twelve Bagels let me know early he’d be coming to me for a bid on their logo job. I’m glad they did.

They have a super smart team of founders. Together we walked through the process of zeroing in on exactly the logo they needed.

212° is the temperature at which bagels are boiled before placing them in the oven on long narrow planks of wood. The image of boiling rings of dough was a very exciting starting point for me but we all agreed Little Rock’s first bagel shop needed a different take. This is partly because many of the neighborhoods which are trying to invite in more shops like Two-Twelve° Bagels have not yet optimized the pedestrian experience, so the logo needs to be equal parts wholly original and easy to spot and distinguish from a car. Sharp line art goes a long way to accomplish these goals. So we worked our way away from solid fills, small details, and literalness toward simple, engaging shapes.

The pattern is what hooked them. There are plans for this pattern to be applied to pastry paper liners, bags, etc.

We decided to also create two stand alone variations on the strict logo (seen in the yellow mug above). The first being “Two-Twelve° Bagels” as seen in the white mug above and simple “pattern-in-a-bagel” as seen mocked up on the yellow hat.

Dubbed the ‘Homer Simpson donut nightmare’.

No-go.

Somehow Stonehengy.

No-go.

Feels like a Sesame Street animation.

No-go.

212

On to something.

bagels

212 bagels

And so on…

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Thank you for the assiduous skimming of my portfolio!

See you around,

“In an era of exurban sprawl, closely knit neighborhoods have renewed appeal. So, too, on page and screen, where a rich texture of information can function better than sparseness and isolation.”

— Ellen Lupton, Thinking With Type

Have a good one!

*

SELF-POWERED

Ba-

bryan@bryanmoats.com (479) 841-2629

da-

bryanmoats.com

bing!

10577 Copperhead Road Dardanelle, AR 72834

†

Thank you for your consideration!

Aloha, Fine print. But then who are we to say if print is fine or not?

Why don’t we let print tell us how print is?

You have the floor, print.

‡ Say hi to…the gang?

out.

§

You’re now experiencing the designed equivalent of saying goodbye to someone in the grocery store only to see them again *once, †twice, ‡three, or §four more times and each time your child asks, “Why don’t you know where you remember him from?” loud enough to be heard in the produce department.