Anderson McConaughy Design · Est. 1988
Find the clear form of the thing, then get out of its way.
Designer, illustrator, musician — and publisher of civic records that people can actually check.
01 — The flagship project
The Civic Record
A public-interest archive of verifiable civic records — evidence before rhetoric, corrections in public, accountability without spectacle.
The Civic Record documents the exercise of public power through the things that can actually be checked: official documents, verified statements, credible reporting, and historical context — with the source, date, and status of every claim held up to the light.
It is built on a simple conviction: a scattered public record is not the same as an understandable one. Facts, allegations, analysis, and opinion are labeled differently, because they are different. What is unchecked is named as unchecked. What is corrected gets corrected in public, on the record.
Evidence before rhetoric
Primary records first. Clear lines between documented fact, allegation, analysis, and opinion — so readers can weigh each item on its own footing.
Corrections as infrastructure
A public methodology and a public correction channel. The record shows how material was sourced, updated, disputed, and repaired.
Verification as an evidence chain
Automation may flag a reason to look; only a human-gated evidence chain may change the record. Nothing updates by silent diff.
Accountability without dehumanization
Conduct is examined against reasonable standards of public power — never as spectacle, rumor, or a vehicle for private grief.
"We are the lantern-bearers, the ones pointing out the path ahead."
— The Civic Record, working notes
02 — The initiative
UNITED Circle φ
The united circle of us — a living lattice of belonging, reciprocity, and shared light. No one carries it alone; everyone belongs before they have to prove anything.
The UNITED Circle is a standing invitation to treat helping others as a basic responsibility of being human — organized so that participation, trust, and care can grow together, without turning membership into recruitment or payment.
Its work runs on twelve lantern principles — light within, connection, compassion, memory, stewardship, order, community, sensory awareness, cycles, shadow, awakening, belonging — arranged on the faces of a dodecahedron, so that the sequence itself tells the story. Each person carries one lantern. Then two. Then hands one to a friend.
"I recognize the light that has always been within me, I remember my connection to all life, I choose to walk in truth and respect, as part of the united circle of us φ."
— The Pledge of the Circle
03 — The person
About Bill
Designer, illustrator and musician. Forty years in, still looking for the clear form of the thing.
I won a national calligraphy competition at twelve, which got me a seat in Lloyd Reynolds's room at Reed College and a habit I never shook. In 1988, Dave Anderson and I founded Anderson McConaughy Design. The work ran from Jack Nicklaus Design to the Portland Opera, from Doernbecher Children's Hospital and OHSU's neurological sciences programs to Habitat for Humanity, the March of Dimes, and the Anne Frank Foundation — logos, campaigns, publications, and the quieter job of helping institutions say plainly what they are for.
Working alongside development offices, I helped shape the fundraising strategy behind the $64 million arena that became the Moda Center, and put promotional muscle behind the Tibetan Resettlement Foundation's U.S. appearances of the Dalai Lama and the Gyuto Monks. I've taught design, printing, color theory, calligraphy, papermaking and bookbinding at colleges and studios around Oregon.
Every genre is a room in the same burning house. Solo acoustic, soul, bebop, classical, country: one furnace. These days I work on things nobody is paying for: civic projects, a few stories, and the long argument that a well-made thing is a form of care.
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2002
Children in Crisis: Voices from the Holocaust
Poster for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, International Holocaust Remembrance Day. With Dave Anderson.
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In spite of everything
From Living Glass, a seventy-foot installation of images and calligraphy at Emanuel Hospital, Portland. Blackletter and italic, by hand.
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2005
Gray Matters
Poster for OHSU Brain Awareness Season.
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Afton Water
Golden-section study for a Robert Burns commemorative plaque, New Cumnock, Scotland.
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Hope Is Vital
Commemorative stamp sheet for Africa AIDS Response, Portland–Mutare Sister City Association.
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The Algebra of Winter
Traditional acoustic fingerstyle guitar. One furnace, many rooms.
04 — The door
Get in touch
For The Civic Record, the UNITED Circle, or the long argument that a well-made thing is a form of care: