About

Hello, my name is Rob Arias. I’m a fourth-generation Californian, an East Bay native, and a proud Hispanic American.

I’m a career graphic designer who later became involved in local journalism, eventually diving into local history. Along the way, I became obsessed with neighborhood nicknames and realized that many newer residents were unaware of them—putting these identities at risk of slowly fading away. What better way to enshrine a neighborhood than by hanging it on a wall or wearing it on a shirt?

My first design was for Emeryville, where I was living at the time and writing for a local news website I founded called The E’ville Eye. The design caught on, and eventually I created similar-style shirts for Oakland through Oaklandish and for Berkeley through Berkeleyside. People seemed to enjoy them, and I began branching out to other cities, including my hometown of Fremont and my current home of Pleasant Hill.

These typographic maps are thoroughly researched, meticulously hand-designed, and vetted through local online communities. I make it a point to distinguish the highways and expressways that carve through our cities and often define neighborhood boundaries.

My goal is to eventually create one for every city in the Bay Area, bringing a small measure of pride to each of them along the way.