Ross Proulx creates an adaptable visual world for Matty Matheson

Designing for someone whose personality already fills the room is a challenge. Do you compete with it or contain it? For Toronto-based designer Ross Proulx, working with chef, actor and executive producer Matty Matheson required a third option: build a system that could hold everything without holding anything back. Matty Matheson occupies many spaces. He’s an executive producer on the Emmy Award-winning series The Bear, where he also plays Neil Fak. He’s a restaurateur running Matty’s Patty’s Burger Club and Prime Seafood Palace in Toronto. He’s a best-selling author. He hosted Dead Set on Life and It’s Suppertime! on Viceland. He’s a collector of vintage clothing and ephemera. For Proulx, translating this range into a unified identity meant thinking less about aesthetics and more about experience. The concept revolves around a feeling Proulx wanted to replicate: the sensation of rummaging through a vintage shop. Whether it’s a patch from an old auto body shop or a matchbook from a defunct 70s steakhouse, these fragments carry a uniformity that transcends their individual origins. “Years of collecting reference books and observing how design principles have been interpreted throughout history informed how I combine an eclectic mix of type and design styles so that each piece feels unique while communicating a cohesive experience,” Proulx shares. The approach allowed mismatched elements, like bold condensed type beside script lettering and arched compositions sitting next to hand-drawn illustrations, to read as variations within a single world rather than fragments of several.