Cinco Preguntas with Anthony Welborn: Graphic Designer for the San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo

Anthony Welborn is a Graphic Designer for the San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Graphic Design from St. Cloud State University in St. Cloud, Minnesota in 1996. With 25+ years of experience, he is a self-starter, a former studio owner, and has collaborated with small businesses domestically and internationally in a vast range of industries. 

We spoke with him about how he got started in graphic design, some tools of the trade, his experience with the San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo, and how he thinks AI will influence the industry.

MiSA:  How did you decide on graphic design as a profession?

A.W.:  I’ve probably known since a pretty early age what I’d be when I grew up (although there might be some debate about if I’ve actually grown up).  Although, if you’d asked me when I was young, I probably would have said I was going to be a Commercial Artist, because Graphic Designer wasn’t really in the public lexicon then the way it is now.  I entered a Tee Shirt contest for RIF (Reading Is Fundamental) in 1980 when I was 10 years old, it was the first glimmer I had of knowing my audience, and turning in a design that I knew had a solid shot at winning. 10 year old me won that contest, and I’ve been chasing that feeling of connecting with a client/stakeholder, and turning in a design that hits a homerun on the first try ever since.

MiSA:  If you were to travel back in time and give your design student self some advice about working in the industry, what would you tell yourself?

A.W.:  That Graphic Design can be art, but also to not neglect learning the business side of design. In fact, this is probably the area where university programs fail their students the most.  Many of us freelance at one time or another, and others build an entire career on it, and teaching the business side of things would keep so many designers from getting their business acumen education from the school of hard knocks.  Also, the importance of learning what your own aesthetic/style/point of view cannot be overstated, and I’d definitely talk to design-student-me about that.

MiSA:  Tell us about your recent work with the San Antonio Rodeo and the design story behind the visual concepts that you designed for them.

A.W.:  I think what makes a good designer is being a life-long learner. During the course of our careers we learn so many different industries and what makes them tick, because that’s how we know what they need visually and how to position them.  Working for the San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo has been an amazing experience.  Learning about the organization and its mission when I joined the team has made me even more passionate about wanting the organization to be successful and doing everything I can to help contribute to that success.

Before joining the team, I didn’t know that the SA Rodeo is a 501(c)(3), and that they take their mission of putting scholarship dollars into the hands of Texas students very seriously. Since the inception of the SA Rodeo in 1949, we’ve awarded over $255 Million in scholarships, grants, and endowments.

2024 marked our 75th Anniversary and designing that commemorative brand identity was a great project to create and work on. The icon came first, building on the Rodeo's well-known S Cowboy Hat logo element, that has been in place for over 20 years. Then, my aha moment came when I realized there was the perfect place in our traditional logo to add in the 75th element. Inspired by vintage Americana, and very much a "Greatest Show on Earth" vibe, the SA Rodeo 75th Brand Identity has been a fun campaign and design system to implement across the board. Aside from that, at the 2023 Rodeo, the San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo launched its own Tequila! As a non-profit whose mission is to give away as much scholarship money as we can, we started this venture as a passive income stream so we're not so reliant on just the Rodeo income, so all of our proverbial eggs are not in one basket. I LOVE this kind of forward-thinking.

I wanted the design of the logo/brandmark to represent us, and the design of the label and bottle to underline our roots. My aim was for it to feel like an artifact that someone might have unearthed in the ruins of an old cantina.

You don't get what we know today as the American Cowboy without the original influences of Charros and Vaqueros. I wanted the design and collateral to reflect that.  It can be found at just about every Spec’s and other locations in San Antonio as well as bought online.  I don’t know if it’s the first, but it is truly a non-profit spirit, as sales of the Tequila go right back into our Scholarship Fund, which is fantastic.

MiSA:  What design software do you use regularly and for what types of design projects?

A.W.:  Creative Cloud is really my workhorse, I use everything from the mainstays (Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign) down to Adobe Fonts, Stock and Acrobat.  Some others that are essential to my workflow is I have tons of notes in Evernote, and for concepting and even finished logos, I’ll draw some things on the iPad in Procreate and turn them into a vector.  All my logos and smaller art pieces (icons, headline art) are generated in Illustrator, I use InDesign for anything in print, or generating electronic PDFs, because there is so much automation you can use to really save time, and any photo compositing or retouching is all done in Photoshop. I have always loved the interconnectivity; I only occasionally wish that the hotkeys stayed the same over all the programs (I’m looking at you Import and Export in Illustrator, take a cue from InDesign, please).

MiSA:  How do you think AI will affect your industry (positively, negatively, both)?

A.W.:  I think both, at least right now. There’s no question that it is saving time for many designers, and they’re automating aspects of their jobs that is a good fit for AI.  Although, image generation? I think there are too many issues that need to be solved before it becomes any sort of a useful tool, like contending with AI being trained from copyrighted images, the unauthorized use of someone’s likeness, and in general dealing with the overall blandness of it all.  One thing we can’t do is ignore it. That genie is already out of the bottle.

Cover Image:  Anthony Welborn in the arena at the 2023 San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo. Photo Credit: Scott Foley.