Bryan Moss with three large to-go cups he individually designed for White Castle. Credit: Courtesy of Bryan Moss
Local artist Bryan Moss was granted the opportunity to help White Castle celebrate its century-long existence and partnership with Coca-Cola by creating a custom mural and correlating cup designs.
Moss, a full-time self-taught artist and digital creator, was born and raised on the South Side of Columbus. Growing up, he said art helped him escape negative aspects of his home life.
“Growing up poor, art was a really good outlet and opened up a positive, fluid way of thinking that got me out of my neighborhood,” Moss said.
As a muralist in the city, Moss has made a plethora of connections within the Columbus art community. He said he got involved with White Castle after they saw his work at the Columbus Arts Festival in 2019 and has been working at the company’s headquarters at 555 W. Goodale St. since.
In 2019, Moss created a virtual reality activity for the company, which served as a cartoon adventure embodying the brand. In the same year, he helped design a mural inside of their Short North drive-thru restaurant, which closed permanently in May 2020.
This year, to celebrate 100 years of Coca-Cola’s collaboration with the fast-food chain, Moss said he was employed by both companies to design a mural at White Castle’s headquarters, which would also be printed on large drink cups for the restaurant.
“Designed by Bryan Moss, the cups come alive with sound and motion when viewed through a smartphone,” according to White Castle’s website.
To commemorate White Castle and Coca-Cola’s anniversary, Moss said he decided to take a comic-book storytelling approach to make the designs interchangeable and cohesive no matter the arrangement of images.
Moss said he found it important to capture diversity.
“These brands are global and national, but they’re also local, so I wanted to show the diversity all the way from the local level to the top of the brand,” Moss said.
To capture the local diversity of Columbus, Moss incorporated people he personally knew into the mural. Rustam Rustam, a fellow creator and Columbus native, can be seen DJing on one of the cup’s designs.
“I reached out to Bryan about a painting, but he said it was sadly sold out, so instead he surprised me and said he’d put me on this project for White Castle,” Rustam said.
Although he knew he’d be included in the project, Rustam said he did not realize how widely the design would be spread.
“It was so nice that he did that, I was not expecting it to be on the White Castle cup,” Rustam said.
To make the designs more interactive, Coca-Cola and White Castle decided to utilize Moss’s previous digital work with White Castle and incorporate it into their 100-year anniversary of partnership.
“For them to trust me and let me do what I do best is pretty refreshing. It’s super humbling that they turned the entire project over to me,” Moss said.
Moss is currently working on a graphic novel for Abrams Books, which will be coming out in the beginning of 2022.
To experience Moss’s digital creations, customers who order a large drink from White Castle can visit 1921.whitecastle.com on a smartphone and scan the cup to uncover the story behind the collaboration.
