California-based artist and designer Kevin Story Mintern creates things that are reminiscent of days gone by. Seeking to “breathe magic into the mundane” Kevin makes paper goods such as recipe cards, grocery lists, and calendars that are not only beautiful, but functional.
Kevin has worked on a variety of commissions for various clients. Recently he has been enjoying putting together a line of T-shirts for his favorite record store, Ragin Records in Fresno, California. His design work has also been featured on Shein, and a line of T-shirts and shorts he designed in collaboration with YANG is available in select Footlocker stores throughout the West Coast, with another drop on the way.
The artist tells us; “Finding and creating a connection with the rich history of hand made decorative elements when you live in an area of predominantly beige track homes that all look the same in the middle of suburban California, definitely takes some specific cultivation”. Thus, Kevin often finds himself seeking out estate sales, vintage shops, and record stores looking for hidden gems and interesting lettering or compositions.
His working process typically involves drawing bold black line images in Procreate on his iPad, and then moving them into Adobe Illustrator to vectorize. If the image is intended to be screen printed, Kevin will colour the image in with a series of coloured halftone dots and arrange each colour by layer. He typically keeps it to 4 colours, but recently had the pleasure of designing a poster for Paradox cannabis that they had screen printed in 12 colours (it even glows in the dark!).
Kevin has been around print media and typograhy his entire life; his father works for a large scale printing business and spent several summers growing up running large print jobs for cinema posters. He graduated in 2018 from California State University Fresno with a degree in traditional drawing and painting. “It’s funny I actually used to detest doing digital artwork and now I exclusively work digitally,” says the designer.
Kevin has authored and illustrated The ABCs of Fantasy Workbook for young children learning how to read and write, and hopes to more books picked up by a publishing house soon. He is looking forward to working on more clothing designs and is hoping to design an album cover for a major label.
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