About

Matt Flowers is a graphic designer at Kelley & Co., a consultancy that partners with nonprofits across Portland and the broader Pacific Northwest. I recently created the brand and website for Oregon Resilience Summit.

Recent freelance projects include refreshing the visual identity for Pygmalion, a music and liberal arts festival held every year in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, and producing art catalogs for the Metal Museum in Memphis. In collaboration with colleagues from Gecko Designs in Missoula, Montana, I also developed a new logo for Missoula Public Health. I've also done work that ended up in unexpected places, like branding and posters for Vital Hat Co., displayed in Lids stores nationwide.

A few examples from recent collaborations

View Case Studies

Wax Era is the design practice of Matt Flowers. The name comes from the so-called "junk wax era" of baseball cards in the late '80s and early '90s. Read a short history of baseball cards during that time and why I chose Wax Era.

How a hobby lost its heart to a gold rush

The Junk Wax Era

Beyond my work in the nonprofit and marketing spaces, I've also spent years working with music venues, festivals, a few record labels, and independent artists.

My interest in indie rock and gig posters led to a steady stream of design work.

I spent formative years designing for Champaign-Urbana's music community — Pygmalion, Smile Politely, The Illiac, The Canopy Club, The Accord, Mike 'N' Molly's, and others. The Accord gave me one of my first major brand overhauls. I also spent a decade designing for Pygmalion, the annual music and liberal arts festival founded by Seth Fein. That collaboration with Seth continues today — festival campaigns, one-off posters, and countless experiments.

I've created artwork for music released by independent record labels such as Polyvinyl Records, Lefse Records, Fin Records, and Rhymesayers. I've worked with artists like Budo, Grynch, Psychic Twin, and Grieves.

Budo (Joshua Karp), a prolific musician and record-producer from Seattle, has been a frequent collaborator. I designed the covers for his One Bird on a Wire and The Finger & The Moon solo releases, as well as the 2013 Grynch collaboration Treadin'. You can watch them perform the single live on KEXP, a full-circle moment for someone who spent much of his 20s listening to KEXP online.

Designing the 2013 single for Psychic Twin's release on Polyvinyl Records was especially meaningful. As a longtime fan of PV, having a piece of work in its catalog felt like a milestone.

I've also crafted gig posters for musicians like Damien Jurado, TW Walsh, Hum, Stars of the Lid, and John Vanderslice, among others.