Mayer/Reed is pleased to announce the promotion of Senior Visual Communications Designer Emily Morishita, SEGD, to Associate. Emily joined Mayer/Reed in 2021 as our first Seattle employee, bringing more than 25 years of experience designing and managing public projects.

A thoughtful and forward-thinking designer, Emily applies her strong interest in designing for the public realm to urban and transportation placemaking and wayfinding systems. Her recent work includes the Pacific Science Center in Seattle, the C Concourse Expansion at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, and Portland’s West End Street Plazas, including Pride Plaza and the Darcelle XV Promenade.

We are proud to recognize Emily’s leadership and contributions to Mayer/Reed and look forward to her continued work creating welcoming, connected public spaces.

The latest exhibition in the Mayer/Reed Gallery features the work of Charles “Chuck” Hayden (1927–2024), an advertising illustrator, educator and artist—and relative and early inspiration to Mayer/Reed Associate Debbie Shaw.

“I knew him as my mom’s crazy cousin from New York, but we called him Uncle Chuck,” says Shaw. “Always the unconformist, stepping out of line, testing the boundaries, trying to squeeze a tasty bit of life out of every moment, Chuck wrote his own story and inspired us to do the same.”

The three-part series presents selections from the countless sketchbooks Chuck filled throughout the 1980s and 1990s. The pages were not intended as finished works, but as quick studies of composition, light, color and figures that could later inform paintings and illustrations. The exhibition explores three recurring themes in his life and work: his Western roots and love of cowboys and horses, his career in the New York advertising industry and his lifelong practice of figure drawing.

Through these sketchbook pages, the series offers a glimpse into the curiosity, creativity and unconventional spirit that defined Chuck’s life and work.  

Our in-studio gallery recently featured works by Mayer/Reed designer, Fred Stiber. This sculptural series represents an early chapter in Fred’s experience as an artist. Created during the summer after his graduation from Duke University where he focused on art and sculpture, these inventive pieces explore form, material and the space around them.

While working for a professor in the sculpture studio, Fred spent his free time creating art of his own from the studio’s discarded materials. He combined and modified steel, wood and acrylic using welding and bolts, sometimes painting the finished pieces and other times leaving the materials in their raw state. The three works displayed are titled: Summer of ’95, The One with a Tail and I-beam of Genie.

More than three decades later, Fred credits this early exploration of three-dimensional composition and construction as an important influence on his current work in signage design.

Our rotating art gallery recently featured the energetic work of Delphina Seeger, a student at Ida B. Wells High School and daughter of our marketing manager.

Selected from Delphina’s junior year AP art portfolio, four oil paintings featuring a coyote, great blue heron, river otters and mallard ducks each portray a delightful scene from the ecosystems of our region. Her technique explores color and stylization through animal subjects. “I used vibrant underpaintings,” she shares, “and experimented with naturalistic and expressive color palettes.”

Delphina will attend Oregon State University this fall, majoring in zoology with a minor in studio art.