Brian Noyes is the art director of Smithsonian magazine and has been with the magazine since mid-2002, completing a redesign his first year.
He is only the third art director in the publication's 35-year history, replacing an art director who had been in the position for 25 years.
Noyes was previously the art director of The Washington Post Magazine for two terms, the National Trust for Historic Preservation's Preservation Magazine
(sharing in a National Magazine Award for General Excellence), and Conde Nast's House & Garden. A twenty-year retrospective of his work was included in
Meredith College's exhibit on four American graphic designers, along with Michael Bierut, Alexander Isley and Paula Scher, in Raleigh, NC.

A fifth-generation Californian, he grew up in a newspaper family and spent time after school with his dad at his paper.Noyes launched his publicationdesign
career as art director of The Newport Ensign, a weekly newspaper in Newport Beach, redesigning it at age 18 and winning a silver award from the Society of
Publication Designers. He joined a city magazine company as corporate art director, moving to properties in Tampa, Detroit, Houston and Washington, D.C.
He has lived in the nation's capital for 20 years and, in addition to his magazine design work, has designed books for The White House, National Geographic,
The World Bank, Smithsonian Books and The Washington Post.

Noyes has written on southern primitive folk art for Smithsonian Magazine, history and preservation for The Washington Post Magazine and Preservation
Magazine, and is currently writing and photographing a project on portrait photographers of Cuba for an upcoming story in Smithsonian magazine.

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Erik Washam was born and raised in Maryland, the State of the Daring and Fearless.

After receiving his degree in Visual Communications from UMBC (University of Maryland, Baltimore County)  in 1989, he heads West to Tuscon AZ and while
on vacation, decides that he likes it and calls cold from  the yellow  pages in his hotel room an advertising design at a magazine publisher.
He gets the job for 3 years, learning as he goes, with his sink-or-swim approach to the challenge and to life in general.
It is time then to go back East to Baltimore MD where he becames  "Art Director of Special Publications" a titled created for him.
After a sting as AD at the main magazine, he decides to go freelance for 4 years.

A temp assignment as assistant art director at Smithsonian evolves a year later as a permanent position when Brian Noyes comes on as art director.
sketching in his spare time, he has written drafts for two novels and has an insatiable appetite for schlock cinema and b-movies.
The only domain he does not excel in, is palying the play ukulele, but this is moot point.

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Sailing the Chesapeake in John Smith's Wake

I have been working with Brian Noyes, Senior Art Director and Erik Washam, Associate Art Director at Smithsonian Magazine for many years now.
After Brian has designed the pages and decided on the size of the required maps, and after my agent, Michèle Manasse has established the schedule and
budget for each map, Erik and I work together to produce the final maps needed for each issue.
For the Chesapeake map, Erik provided me with the story, a list of labels for handwritten type and reference maps with locations marked.
I read the story, researched the journals of Captain Smith, including his masterful map "A Map of Virginia" published in 1612, looked through my collection of
atlases and old maps for further details and produced a sketch with land masses indicated, rivers, mountains and towns.
My skech included the hand-written labels in place.
I knew from Brian's layout design of the page that my map would be on the same page as Captain Smith's map, so for this map, the challenge was to
recreate the route of Captain John Smith that was retraced by a modern day sailor.
I felt that my map should have that "old world" feel but yet have a "modern touch" of color and inking that was in keeping with the modern sailor's voyage.
The fact-checking editors proofed the sketch, doing a wonderful job checking my misspellings, and Erik gave me the go-ahead to final art.
Throughout the years, Erik and I have developed a smooth relationship that has become second nature to us both.
The final map was reproduced in the May 2002 issue.

Covers © 2003-2007 Smithsonian Magazine
© 2003-2007 Mike Reagan
Client: Smithsonian Magazine
Medium: Pen, Ink & Watercolor
Size: Various sizes
Use: Editorial