Tuesday 4 October 2016

Art of Punk: Devan Power


I bought my first proper full-sized, screen printed gig poster at a Chuck Ragan show last year. I bought it because the design and colours really caught my eye. So, when I got home and got it all framed up for my bedroom wall, I took to Google and Tineye (reverse image search) in an attempt to find out who the designer of the poster was. The Internet wasn’t very helpful in giving me names so in the end I just tweeted Chuck Ragan and asked. If I remember rightly, he replied pretty promptly and soon I had my answer – Devan Power, a graphic designer based in Ontario, Canada.


I’ve been keeping an eye on Devan’s design portfolio – and Instagram account – since then and, although he does a lot of work for more Americana or folk-based musicians (Jason Isbell and Ivan Rivers), I was pleasantly surprised he’s recently done some designs for The Menzingers as well.


The Menzingers, if you didn’t know, are one of my absolute favourite punk bands. Devan’s T-shirt designs for the band were produced for their North American tour this year – here’s hoping they’ll be available for the UK tour this month as well. I particularly like the hourglass T-shirt but the grim reaper Milo tribute is just brilliant – not sure if it was for a T-shirt as his website doesn’t show it as such.

Devan also plays in a punk band himself, called No Hands, and works a tour manager therefore he has a certain insight into the world of bands and artists he designs for – always good to understand your clients. His designs have a very North American feel to them which is reflected in the typography and imagery – bringing to mind national park decals and tattoo art. This style of design is right up my street and I would happily wear all of these T-shirts (I like the artists too).

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