This Month’s Featured Artist: Derek Bender
This month, Hyperninja is proud to introduce you to Derek Bender. Aside from being one of the best joke tellers east of the Mississippi, Derek Bender is an amazing illustration artist and web designer. You see evidence of Derek’s design is behind such projects as helpmepaymyloans.com, QGalleryart.com and floridadeathmetal.com. We interviewed Bender to find out a little more about him.
Q: Please tell us a bit about your education and background:
A: My background in art and design goes back as far as I can remember. I always used to draw as a kid and when I got to high school I took 4 years of art. When I graduated I knew I wanted to get into web stuff but didn’t know exactly how to do it or where to go. No schools in my area offered anything like that. A week or so before I graduated I received a card in the mail from an art and design school called Collins College in Tempe, AZ. I went and earned an Associate degree in Visual Communication. From there I decided so move on to their sister school in Orlando, FL called International Academy of Design and Technology. There I earned my Bachelors in Web Development even though none of the hard programming and server admin cirriculum really stuck.
Q: When did you first discover your ability to create art?
A: I started drawing at a very young age (as a lot of kids do). Probably around kindergarten. I was never really good and I don’t think I’ve improved much over the years.
Q: How did you find your way into design?
A: In high school I dabbled in HTML and making basic web pages. That along with all the art classes I took in high school and going to an art and design college helped to expose me to the world of design. It was a natural progression.
Q: What programs do you use?
A: Illustrator almost exclusively for anything graphical (web mockups, logos and illustrations) and Photoshop for any image manipulation. I love the clean feel of vector based design and I’ve used Illustrator so much because of that. It would be almost impossible for me to use anything else.
Q: Where do you find inspiration?
A: A lot of places. I always like to look at what others are doing. I pull a lot from all over. Websites, illustrations, logos. And I have a huge list of bookmarks to pull inspiration from if I’m stuck. I am also inspired typography, European and Japanese design. Even just a single color can spark an idea, and it has.
Q: What are some of your favorite pieces you have created?
A: The last piece I do is always my favorite. The more I learn, the more I get to incorporate that into what I’m working on, so everything I do is usually my favorite at one time. But my current favorite pieces are, here
,
here, and here. And of course my pet project Helpmepaymyloans.com
Q: What motivates you to create; to keep pushing forward?
A: Everything I do I always know I can improve with the next thing I try. And by just seeing what other people do, it pushes me even more to try new things/techniques. Design isn’t just something you “learn” and then “do”. It constantly evolves and changes. Its like art. And with that comes the struggle to keep fresh and relevant.
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