Chris Laryea

Ask Chris how many fitted baseball caps he owns, and he’ll probably respond, “Oh…” and then pause for a while to count them up in his head.

There are around 30, he estimates. They span the gamut of New York sports teams — Mets, Giants, Knicks — as a nod to his Queens roots. He selects them based on aesthetic, color story, typeface… you know, graphic designer stuff.

A graduate of NYC’s Katharine Gibbs College, he cut his teeth working as the sole creative for infamous Bravolebrity John Mahdessian’s dry cleaning empire (IYKYK). Then he fell in love with a Mainer (happens to the best of us) and scooted up North to start both a family and his agency career as a studio designer. There he learned to merge his love of technical design with his go-tos for creative inspiration — from Marvel comics to old-school hip hop to, yep, sports — and, poof: the very best kind of creative designer was born. (The kind that thinks big but has the technical precision to make designs really work.)

And how does he know when a design is just right? When it’s smart enough, clean enough and so meticulously executed it makes the audience go “Oh!” right when they see it. Which is a far more resolute “Oh!” than you get when you ask him how many hats he has.