Jason Bays

Heading up the new artists partnership and outreach division of Open Road Brands. Matching outside creative resources to the ever-growing opportunities to maintain ORB’s competitive market standing of providing creative and innovative products to our retail partners, as well as effectively representing our brand partners in a unique and effective manner. Defining opportunities and white space within specific categories and enthusiast groups through the utilization of outside art and artists, as well as providing direction and inspiration for key creative development. Responsible providing insight for the overall strategy, category focus and visual execution of the products you work on. Instrumental in defining key differentiation points of Open Road Brands within the marketplace, among our retail partners and for our brand partners. Applying my unique creative perspective to help push development forward by adding any innovative looks that we see fit or can inform and inspire future creative projects. Offering a new layer of consideration towards how we can differentiate Open Road from our competitors and continue to show brand partners how we bring a new level of creativity to the marketplace.

MrJBays is me and I am MrJBays. My sole endeavor is to seek out new challenges and new applications for my creative skills. From graphic design to illustration. From layout to branding and brand development. From the app icon to the vehicle wrap. Design is all about creative problem solving and discovering new perspectives to the task at hand. Design should be as fearless as it is intelligent. Design should be as fun as it is thought provoking. Design should be familiar and also as the bigger questions. Design is always simply a part of something bigger and is always so much more than simply what the design does.

I'm the resident daydreamer and robot drawer. I write the stories and create the art as i explore the endless possibilities of "what if?"

Android ninjas? Chunky peanut butter-busting nunchuks? Sinister plots hatched to foil fun for kids everywhere? Sounds like another awesome adventure for international machine of mystery KUNG FU ROBOT and his sidekick, MARVIN. Follow their epic showdown with the EVIL KUNG POW CHICKEN, a robotically enhanced arch nemesis and foul fowl bent on destroying the city's peanut butter and jelly supply. Downloaded over 450,000 times worldwide, Kung Fu Robot will be coming to life as a full-length graphic novel in 2017!

Tasked with creating an internal design studio to offer agency level creative services to Grandstand's 5000 craft brewing customers. We worked directly with the customer, who could range from a small start up operation to larger established brands covering multiple markets. We branded and developed the overall structure and operation of the design studio, from name and messaging that would speak to the target market to client engagement processes that would help us understand the story and goals of our customers.

I had the pleasure of teaching a Visual Narrative class to the Junior class in the Illustration Dept. The class took students through and intensive course of storytelling techniques using stop motion animation.