I’m a Bangor, Maine graphic designer, visual identity designer, and artist.
Dylan Moore, designer for Electric Halo Design
I was raised by two self-employed, creative people in Eddington, Maine. My mother is an artisan jewelrymaker and my father was a carpenter and inventor.
Growing up around their entrepreneurship, I had a real appreciation of the struggle and innovation that goes into building businesses.
I saw my father work to build his kitchen equipment business from scratch— salvaging, repairing and reselling whatever he could find.
Over the years, he built on those humble foundations to create a small business that supported our family.
My mother was, and still is, an artist and craftsperson who carved out a flexible work life that empowered her to stay home with me as I grew up.
From my parents, I learned the risks and rewards of forging your own path and doing it your own way. But for a long time, I still didn’t think that was a viable path for me!
You see - I’d been raised to believe that success meant taking the traditional path - going to college and working for someone else. I was a very artistic kid, but I didn’t think I was supposed to be an artist as my job.
So I went to college majoring in Environmental Ethics at the University of Maine. I knew I loved nature, and I liked philosophy a lot. But I wasn’t really the most science-oriented person, and I was struggling.
Struggling to memorize hundreds of rocks, trees, shrubs, chemical formulas — you name it.
Meanwhile, I worked a series of short-lived jobs in mental health, retail and carpentry—whatever I could get, without any sense of a career path.
And then, at age 25, I had a major blow and became severely chronically ill. Eventually, I had to give up my job, move back in with family, and stop attending college.
I had ME/CFS, a severe, multisystem chronic illness that flared up in response to exertion of any kind.
I couldn’t even walk from my car to my classes anymore.
I became totally bedbound, hypersensitive to light and sound, and unable to even sit up for more than five minutes.
My future as I had known it was totally over.
It was an incredibly difficult time, but it also gave some space, some time - to rethink, to start over.
I’d been heading down a path I wasn’t interested in, just because I thought I was supposed to. (I know a lot of entrepreneurs I work with can relate to this realization.) But now my life as I had known it was gone.
And I needed to make a living doing something I could do from home.
I came back to what I’d always loved: Art and design. I began with web design and abstract art, and eventually made my way to illustration and merchandise design.
I needed to forge my own path, since all the traditional ones were closed to me.
When traditional employment and school became impossible, the only thing left was to become an entrepreneur - to do it my own way.
I returned to college to study art history, communication and graphic design.
And I built my business BoyPilot Goods, a retail and wholesale brand focused on stickers, shirts, and other printed products. I designed products on my laptop and shipped them from my bed.
In 2020, I graduated summa cum laude from Southern New Hampshire University.
In 2021, BoyPilot Goods became a top 1% Etsy shop generating a full-time income and I began wholesaling nationwide. In 2022, it became a top 0.1% shop.
In 2022, I also bought my beloved house in Bangor, Maine!
In college, I had discovered a deep interest in logo design and identity design, and I built on that to gain my first identity design client. I found it was incredibly fulfilling to deeply understand my client’s business and to blend strategy and visual design to help them succeed.
