Matthew Flores

No Soap, Radio
Radio Station, Website
(2022-Ongoing)
Listen Here↩

No Soap Radio is a modular, Part 15 AM radio station that treats broadcasting as both a design medium and a physical system. Operating at the scale of a few square kilometers rather than a city, the project explores how transmission, reception, and limitation shape meaning and communication. By working within the constraints of Part 15 AM—low power, short range, and susceptibility to noise—No Soap Radio foregrounds the material conditions of radio: antennas as design objects, static as texture, and proximity as an organizing principle. The station functions as a flexible platform for sound works, experimental programming, and teaching, emphasizing radio as an intimate, local form of publication and communication.

I designed and built a custom website for No Soap, Radio using Kirby CMS and developed a fully self-hosted backend platform using AzuraCast, all running on a Raspberry Pi 5 sitting on my desk.

100 Year Website
Website
(2024)
More Info↩

A simple gesture and meditation on the often delicate nature of websites, how links rot and don't come back, the dozens of browser tabs I have open at any given moment, and how computers are just rocks we taught to think.

100 Year Erosion is a website that's designed to slowly erode, turning the mountain to dust over 100 years - but only as long as the page is live in your browser.

All it takes is a single line of CSS!

.mountain { animation: fadeOut ease 3153600000s; }

Bartelby
Livestream, Performance
(2024)

In December 2024, I was invited to participate in the @thing.tube NO-THING 24 hour livestream.

thing.tube is a peer-to-peer livestreaming platform and a form of software development as performance art. By decentralizing streaming through a variety of low- and high-tech interventions, the project offers an alternative to mainstream platforms like Twitch and YouTube, granting artists greater control over their work and its distribution. This approach fosters direct interaction between creators and visitors, without the mediation of conventional channels.

This livestream was organized around the theme of "nothing", so my contribution was to spend the day coding a website with the full text of Herman Melville's "Bartelby, the Scrivener", taking requests from the chat for CSS style tweaks.

Room-Sized Websites
ESP-32 Modules, Websites, Installation
(2025)

These room-sized websites reimagine the web as a spatial, embodied experience. Each site is custom-coded and developed using a network of ESP-32 microcontrollers that create localized Wi-Fi access points using captive portals. An ESP-32's signal only reaches a few dozen feet from each board, encouraging the user's movement through the room and making proximity, orientation, and chance part of the browsing experience.

The work explores ideas of narrowcasting, access, and scale, asking the user to consider what a website becomes when it is temporary, offline, and inseparable from a physical environment. By designing, developing, and deploying both the hardware and software, I collapse distinctions between server, interface, and exhibition architecture.

vols.design
Website, Class
(2025)

vols.design was a homepage for my GRDS 256 - Interaction Design classes at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville School of Design. One of my goals when rebuilding this class was to teach students how to build rich digital spaces and experiences with the simplest tools possible - in our instance, vanilla HTML, CSS, and a little bit of JS.

As a demonstration, I built vols.design using these same tools and principles. It offered a straightforward but powerful example that you don't need the latest (and often sluggish) front-end frameworks to design a website.

RADIO FREE GRDS
Radio Station, Website, Class
(2025)
Listen Here↩

Transmission//Reception was a special topics course I taught at UTK in Spring 2025. In this studio, students explored broadcasting through a variety of graphic forms, materials, and technologies. In particular, students programmed and operated a Part 15 AM radio station transmitting both within the Art + Architecture building and streaming online.

RADIO FREE GRDS was an experiment in collaborative broadcasting, transmitted from the @utkschoolofdesign. The signal is comprised of 18 individual stations, each with a unique programming strategy, aesthetic, and perspective.

Using the concept of broadcasting as a framework, students designed both physical (fliers, posters, and beyond) and invisible (radio broadcasts, sound design, and performance) media that engage with and complicate the act of communicating, while thinking critically about the importance of medium and message in their work. We researched and pulled inspiration from moments of intervention and subversion in public communication, with a special focus on underground, freeform, alternative, guerrilla, and pirate forms.

Caesar's Palace Jump
576 pages, laser print on 8.5” x 11”, binder bound
(2024)

576 pages, laser print on letter size paper (the king of paper formats), binder-bound.

I spent much of 2024 finding ways to avoid using Adobe Creative Cloud software (I optimistically called it "My Year of Alternative Tools") as both a protest against Adobe's increasingly pushy use of generative AI, but also as a way to think through my process as a designer and user. Caesar's Palace Jump in particular is an experiment in finding a complicated workaround in order to make a simple book layout.

Alternative tools workflow:
download video using semi-legal internet tools ➡️ extract frames using ffmpeg command line tool (I think the command was something like ffmpeg -i knievel.mp4 -qscale:v 1 exported-frames/frame_%04d.png) ➡️ create the page layout using Finder and Keynote, adding page numbers and images ➡️ printing on the mailroom Xerox (don’t tell the IT department)

I'm Feeling Lucky
Website
(2017-Current)


I’m Feeling Lucky is an experiment in direct-to-consumer art.

A viewer purchases an original print through Paypal, which triggers a series of automated server processes - the code randomly selects an image from Google, applies a pre-made template (with my signature), and sends the file to be printed and shipped. The customer doesn’t know what print they’re buying until it arrives, and I never see what images ultimately are being sold with my signature attached (really, I don’t want to see it. Please don’t tag me @matthewflores with any purchased prints with my name on them).

More Info↩

Finder Jürgen
Image Files, Finder Window
(2025)

Finder Jürgen is an experiment in alternative publishing that asks whether a book can be laid out and read within a Finder window.

Rather than a fixed sequence of pages, the publication exists as a live, ephemeral system: files, folders, and metadata become typographic and structural elements. The content continuously changes in response to how the user resizes, sorts, opens, and navigates the window, making interaction an integral part of reading. By treating the operating system interface as simultaneously a medium and a layout tool, the project reframes publishing as a dynamic, user-driven process rather than a static object.

PROCESSING/CREATIVE CODING
Image Files, Finder Window
(2024-Ongoing)

As part of My Year of Alternative Tools, I've been experimenting with Processing and p5.js to code graphics as a way of stepping outside commercial design software and returning to a more intuitive way of making.

Writing code to generate form forced me to think about process over polish, and how to embrace variability, constraint, and imperfection as design values. What happens when I focus on play and experiment rather than the dreaded "deliverable"?

PASTE-UP HELPER
Web Application
(2025)

I like to bridge between very digital and very analog ways of making in the studio - lately, this means designing flyers and print projects using a traditional paste-up layout technique.

A major pain point of this method is setting and resetting text and images in different sizes - so I put together a very quick and very rough helper to make it go a little faster and smoother.

Paste-Up Helper lets you add text/images, select your font (more coming soon!), choose some sizing options, and export to .PDF for printing and cutting and pasting! All built in a basic browser app with vanilla HTML/CSS/JS.

It's important to make your own tools, even if they're coarse and janky!

CERNE ABBAS GIANT.PDF
Modified PDF File
(2025)

Quick: what’s the maximum allowed dimensions of a PDF file? Any guesses? I’ll wait.

Answer: 15 million inches by 15 million inches or about 381 km2.

I thought this was a very funny but also very real limitation, so I looked for a reasonably funny image to display at its maximum size. I landed on an actual size PDF of the Cerne Abbas Giant, a (semi) famous example of pseudo-indigenous land art in Dorset, England.

Naturally, I had to print it out to test (again, please don’t tell the IT department I used a staff printer).

Hello, World
Radiofax transmission, 44:25 min.
Published as 90 minute cassette
(2025)
Listen here:


As a radio enthusiast and someday Ham Radio Operator (I'm going to take the exam soon, I promise!), much of my time in the studio is finding ways to compare radio technology with visual design, and to see how each can tell us something about the nature of communication.

A particularly niche activity in the Ham world is EME Moonbounce, where you use the Moon itself as a giant reflector dish, bouncing your signal to the other side of the globe. I always wanted to go to the Moon, so I made a self-portrait, encoded it into a format for radio fax transmission (it sounds a little like dial-up), and recorded it to cassette for a future moon bounce transmission.

Who's on First?
Poster
24" x 36"
(2024)

I designed this poster using Hellschreiber (a very antiquated protocol for radio) transmissions of Abbott and Costello's "Who's on First?" routine. I sent each line of the script to myself over shortwave radio, letting atmospheric noise and signal drift corrupt the text into visual static.

The Hellschreiber's mechanical printing method turns each miscommunication into literal marks on paper: garbled names, dropped words, and interference patterns that mirror the confusion in the original sketch. The poster uses these transmission artifacts as their primary typography, where "What" becomes visual noise and "I Don't Know" disintegrates into pixel scatter. Static isn't a bug here but the actual design language, making the medium perform the same breakdowns as the comedy routine it carries.

Information-As-Thing
Fax Performance, Installation
Dimensions Variable
(2025)

During my solo show, You're the Man Now, Dog, at Cleo in Savannah, Georgia, I would send daily fax transmissions at a fixed time, building an installation piece by piece over the exhibition's run. I installed clipboards to hold the daily print, creating a growing archive of thermal paper artifacts.

The work operates on multiple temporalities: the slow accumulation of the installation itself, the brief mechanical event of each transmission, and the chance encounter of being present when the fax machine activates. Visitors who showed up at the right moment witnessed the performance aspect, while others saw only its residue.

I'm very interested in fax technology's particular qualities (its line-by-line rendering, relative slowness, and transmission errors), and this is an attempt to reclaim the weridness of fax as both medium and subject, turning the obsolescence of telecommunication hardware into a gallery event that unfolds whether anyone's watching or not.

I Was Trying to Describe You to Someone (Funny Fone)
Coin-Operated Joke Machine
12” x 12” x 18”
(2024)

Jokes are a terribly intimate form of communication, even if we tend to resist thinking of them in that way. These Funny Fones used to exist more firmly in the context of how we communicate with each other on a daily basis - maybe you remember seeing one in an arcade, or a bowling alley, or at the end of a bank of payphone.

I repurposed an original Funny Fone and filled it with custom electronics (Arduino, mostly) and code so that instead of playing you a joke, when you pay a quarter it plays an audio telling of Richard Brautigan’s “I Was Trying to Describe You to Someone.” The catch: some of the recordings are performed by a human, others by an AI deepfake. Each playback asks whether the voice delivering these lines changes their meaning, whether intimacy survives algorithmic speech, and what happens when you try to make something as private as describing someone you care about a transaction.

Heaven
Prayer box, Custom Electronics
3.5" x 2" x 1" (2023)

I wanted to learn how to design and manufacture (have manufactured, I suppose) PCBs, so I used a very simple box that plays Buddhist prayer songs on loop, and added my own circuitry so that it played a slowed down, choir version of the Talking Heads "Heaven".

GEORGIA PUBLIC BROADCASTING
Design, Front-End Development, User Experience
(2019-2023)

As a UX/UI Designer and Front-End Developer at Georgia Public Broadcasting, I led the effort to rethink and redesign the organization’s digital presence across web and mobile platforms. Working within a public media context, I focused on clarity, accessibility, and editorial structure, ensuring that our news, education, and cultural programming verticals were easy to discover and engaging to navigate. I collaborated closely with the newsroom, engineering, and product teams to translate a complex content ecosystem into coherent user experiences, balancing the needs of diverse audiences with the constraints of legacy systems and public media standards.

I spearheaded a complete redesign of GPB’s Drupal-based website and companion app, designing and developing user-facing systems that were flexible, scalable, and responsive across devices. This included establishing design patterns, refining navigation and information architecture, and implementing component-based interfaces that could support ongoing growth. By aligning visual design, UX strategy, and front-end development, the redesign modernized GPB’s digital identity while improving performance, usability, and long-term maintainability.

GPB Education
Design, Front-End Development, User Experience
(2019-2023)

As a Designer for GPB Education, I focused on creating engaging, age-appropriate digital experiences for K–5 students across the state of Georgia. My work centered on the design of a suite of educational games and interactive software that aligned with state curriculum standards while remaining playful, intuitive, and accessible for young learners. I collaborated with educators, curriculum specialists, and developers to translate learning objectives into clear visual systems, interaction patterns, and game mechanics that supported exploration and discovery.

Across these projects, I emphasized usability and inclusivity—designing interfaces that could be easily understood by early readers, accommodate a wide range of abilities, and perform reliably in classroom environments with varying levels of technology access. I developed visual systems, UI components, and interaction flows that balanced fun with instructional clarity, ensuring that the games functioned as both an educational tool and an inviting entry point to digital learning. This work contributed to a statewide platform that supported teachers, engaged students, and extended public education through thoughtfully designed interactive media.

ONETEAM PARTNERS
Website Design & Development
(2022)

Website design and development for OneTeam Partners, a pioneer in the Name, Image, Likeness sports market.

Willie Nelson & Friends Museum
Poster
24" x 36" each
(2019)

Poster campaign for the Willie Nelson & Friend Museum in Nashville, Tennessee.

Project: App Design
GRDS 256 - Interaction Design
UTK School of Design

Description: For this assignment you will create an app from the content of ten linked Wikipedia entries. Everyone will start from the same place: the Wikipedia entry for Interaction Design. From within this entry you will choose a word or phrase which is hyperlinked to another Wikipedia entry, and collect the main column text for that term. From this second term you will choose another hyperlinked term, and so on, for 10 terms. (As an example, I collected the following string: interaction design, Muriel Cooper, SX-70, Mylar, sailboat, paddle, yacht, etc.)

The link chain you create will guide the user flow in your app design. Starting from a splash page, you will design an experience that takes a user from the start through the end of your chain. Consider user flow, navigation standards, and the constraints of the mobile device in your design.

Objectives:
→ Create a working prototype of a mobile app, fore fronting user flow and linked content.
→ Consider narrative structures as generative structures.
→ Identify best practices in user navigation.

Tools & Skills:
Figma, Wireframing, User Research, Persona Mapping, Prototyping, Animation, User Flow

Project: PYOP (Propose Your Own Project)
GRDS 256 - Interaction Design
UTK School of Design

For your final project, you are tasked with conceptualizing, pitching, and designing a digital project of your choice. This is intentionally open-ended, as to give you the opportunity to apply and synthesize everything you’ve learned and been curious about this semester into an experience or design you’d like to see exist. Be weird! Take some chances!

Objectives:
→ Practice ideation and idea generation.
→ Prepare and deliver a professional pitch presentation.
→ Integrate research into a comprehensive design system.


Tools & Skills:
Figma, Wireframing, User Research, Persona Mapping, Prototyping, Animation, User Flow, Pitch and Presentation Design

Project: Radio as Publication
GRDS 425 - Transmission//Reception
UTK School of Design

For your final project, you will develop an hour-long radio broadcast alongside a 16+ page printed zine. This project will help us think about how radio can function as a form of publication, and consider the relationship between sound and print.

The challenge is to create a meaningful connection between the broadcast and the zine—bridging the gap between audio and visual storytelling.

Objectives:
→ Explore radio as a form of publication and understand how sound-based media can function alongside printed matter.
→ Develop conceptual and formal connections between audio and visual storytelling through parallel broadcast and print artifacts.
→ Plan, produce, and present long-form content that integrates research, sequencing, and audience experience across multiple media formats.


Tools & Skills:
Audio recording, editing, and sequencing for broadcast, Print layout and publication design, Systems thinking across time-based and static design formats

Project: Atomic Design
GRDS 256 - Interaction Design
UTK School of Design

The Atomic Design framework is a strategy for crafting robust design systems in a methodical, flexible, modular way. You may be asking: what’s a design system? In a nutshell, a design system is a collection of reusable components that can be built together to create any digital product. There are many different ways to approach the creation of a design system. Atomic Design is one of the methodologies for organizing a design system that helps make the life of designers and developers easier and their workflows much more efficient.

In this project, we will be learning the workflow of creating a design system from the ground up using the Atomic Design method. We will also be identifying and classifying some essential UI elements, and exploring how they can be utilized in deliberate ways in order to define the structure, flow, and look of a digital product.

Objectives:
→ Using the Atomic Design framework, create a design system of unique and discrete elements that can be combined into deliverable products.
→ Identify examples of successful or interesting UI elements.
→ Explore the process of wireframing.


Tools & Skills:
Figma, Wireframing, User Research, Persona Mapping, Prototyping, Animation, User Flow, Pitch and Presentation Design

Project: Type Specimen Poster
GRDS 255 - Typography I
UTK School of Design

Design and produce a type “specimen” poster for a typeface. A type specimen is a printed design that demonstrates the range of a typeface, applied to headlines and text in a variety of sizes. Each variation of the typeface should be labeled on the page. Type specimens have existed for centuries to help designers pick a font for a project. Type specimens today can be wildly flamboyant or classical in their approach.

Objectives:
→ Establish and use a simple grid to organize and align elements.
→ Cluster elements to create different typographic densities.
→ Express the nature of the typeface through its overall design.
→ Adjust leading and tracking to create legibility.
→ Compose hierarchy through: emphasis, contrast, balance, repetition, alignment and flow.

Tools & Skills:
InDesign, Historical Research, Print Production

Project: Movement to a Movement
GRDS 103 - Graphic Design Foundations Studio III
UTK School of Design

Movement to a Movement is a motion design project in which students choose a song and are assigned an art or design movement (such as Bauhaus, Futurism, Dada, Surrealism, Constructivism, or Minimalism) to reinterpret as a short animated music video. Through research and formal analysis, students identify the visual language, conceptual frameworks, and historical context of their assigned movement and abstract those qualities into motion, typography, color, rhythm, and pacing.

Rather than focusing on narrative, the project emphasizes sound-driven visual systems and formal experimentation. Students synchronize animation to audio and explore how time, movement, and repetition can function as core design elements. The project introduces industry-standard motion design workflows and positions animation as an extension of graphic design practice.

Objectives:
→ Translate historical and theoretical design movements into contemporary motion design work.
→ Use sound as a structural element to guide timing, rhythm, and motion.
→ Apply foundational animation principles to communicate mood and concept.
→ Utilize transitions to guide us to different scenes of your animation.


Tools & Skills:
Adobe After Effects, Illustrator (asset creation), Audio editing tools, Keyframing and easing, Storyboarding

Project: Accessibility Zoo
GRDS 256 - Interaction Design
UTK School of Design

Web accessibility is a critical aspect of web design and development, focusing on making websites functional for any given user. This concept is rooted in the belief that everyone, regardless of their physical or cognitive abilities, should have equal access to information and services available on the internet. Accessibility is not just a legal requirement but an ethical imperative. By making accessible websites, designers and developers can reach a broader audience and make the online world a more inclusive space.

In this project, we will examine what makes a website accessible, and (maybe more importantly), what makes a website inaccessible to certain users. We will learn current accessibility standards, what they mean, and how they can be applied to a design that is empathetic and plans for differences between individuals.

Objectives:
→ Use sitemaps to guide website navigation design.
→ Define user personas through UX research.
→ Consider accessibility as a core component to a website design.


Tools & Skills:
Figma, Wireframing, User Research, Persona Mapping, Prototyping, Animation, User Flow, Pitch and Presentation Design