Black Spot Flies into the Future with Top Creative Talent Alex Reyes to Lead New Design Unit ‘Aviary’

Black Spot, an end-to-end creative services agency serving such major clients as ABC, AMC, HBO, and NBC-Universal, announces the launch of ‘Aviary’ - a new design practice to complement and propel its suite of marketing service capabilities.

In addition, the agency has hired Alex Reyes to head the Aviary business unit that will offer design-led thinking, from start to finish. 

Alex joins from NBCUniversal's creative team where he partnered with Black Spot on numerous projects including the network's epic Peacock launch. His prior integrated design experience includes work with Disney, Nokia, Showtime, Imaginary Forces, and Raison Pure - to name a few.

Black Spot founder John Laskas commented: “Alex coming to Black Spot feels like a homecoming. We've worked together before on numerous projects big and small and have always done great work as a team. His passion for solving problems with imagery and type is a perfect fit for us.

Alex added: “I was attracted to the opportunity because this is a place where you can be yourself … and you can see and feel that with the people around you (though I mostly see them on screen via video conference).”

Flying Forward to Meet the Future of Design 

For years, Black Spot has provided design services as an “add-on” to its creation of high-end launches, trailers, upfronts, sizzles, and advertising campaigns. 

Adding Aviary to the family of companies at Black Spot is a natural evolution for this firm that offers stem-to-stern creative services to the media industry.

“Our aim is to work closely with our clients from the very beginning of their creative process,” added John, “which has led to a surge in the number of design requests over the past few years. We recognise the need to create a dedicated team focused solely on delivering these services. This decision aligns perfectly with our commitment to meeting all of our clients' evolving needs.”

“The team at Black Spot is an extension of our in-house design team at ABC,” said Lucas Aragon, executive director, design at ABC Television. “The introduction of Aviary is exciting for us since it offers additional ways for us to partner and collaborate.”

Aviary’s newly-launched services include: 

• Concepting: inspiration boards, idea creation, research, storyboards;
• Key art and show packaging;
• Animation of static for social media, GIFs, cinemagraphs; 
• Walk-on graphics for presentations.

“It’s not just about the deliverable. It’s about the collaboration.” said Mike Graney, creative director, AMC Networks Content Room, “That’s why I call Black Spot early and often. Their creative approach and production sense has been foundational in many of my projects over the years. Whether that means creative consultation, editorial, or graphic design & animation, they have never failed to build an exemplary team around my project’s goals. Black Spot is a Swiss army knife of creativity and with Aviary they have added yet another indispensable tool to their reputably superb slate of synergetic offerings. I can’t wait to call them again.”

“There is a reason why our client relationships span over a decade. We’re solving for challenges before issues even come up. With Aviary, Black Spot is continuing our reputation of being an extension of our clients’ creative teams, now in the design arena - it's a natural extension of everything we do. We're excited and well poised for future growth - we look forward to all that’s yet to come,” concluded John. 

Aviary’s current design work can be viewed here.