Canadian Graphic Design

A. 53  11/2/09

At the beginning of every month I head on over to a website I have found which holds what seems to be a design “contest” for people to submit their own calendar computer desktop wallpaper designs and illustrations. Each month I choose my favorite, print it out, and hang it at my desk to use as not only a calendar, but a pretty piece of art to look at and maybe even be inspired by. In April of this year, I came across my favorite design of the year thus far:

I absolutely love(d) the typography-turned-graphic the artist created for the word, April. It was like nothing I had ever seen before. A swirling maze of lines which seemed inspired by Art Nouveau line work and maybe even Renaissance flourishes. To add to the graphic, the green was a pleasant color, too.

For this month of November, I was scrolling through the possible calendar choices I had. I came across a particularly striking black and white composition, simply titled, “Negative Space.” As I was reading the description for his November calendar, [below] I decided I had to look into this artist who intrigued me since I first noticed his work with the April calendar.

“After trying numerous different approaches similar to my flourishing April type, I ultimately settled on a very minimal, negative space-based design. I didn’t include a version without the calendar as it felt a little too minimal without the supportive type.” Designed by Colin Parks from Canada.

I clicked on the artist’s name which in turn took me to his website, www.colinparks.com. After wandering through his site and artwork, I was intrigued to see his other website, an art blog, called Straight No Chaser (which I am also including in my list of links at the right). I highly recommend you visiting it. Not only is Colin Parks a young and clever designer, but another exciting thing about him is that he’s Canadian. (And if you know me, you know that I love Canada.) Below are some of my favorite things he’s designed:

Colin also re-designed the DVD jackets to many of the movies he owns. He is a self-proclaimed movie junkie and owns a varied collection of many movies. The covers he designed can be seen here. Some of my favorites are for “Dracula”, “The Tuman Show”, and ”A Clockwork Orange”.

Well, I hope you enjoyed learning about a Graphic Designer today. I really should be posting more art-related things on this blog…