Cory Bugden’s art is bright, whimsical and cheery. It makes sense. The artist himself is cheery, bright, and prone to joyous chuckling at the general humour of life.
“I’m always giggling, I’m always laughing, I like to crack jokes,” Bugden says. “I would say it influences the art.”
It also makes sense that we chose him to design our limited-edition summertime CKUA t-shirts. At its essence, the assignment was ‘summery, colourful, CKUA.’
After reviewing dozens of local artist portfolios, the team decided on Bugden. His vibrant illustration style was spot-on for echoing the summer sunshine and celebrating our 2024 festival season.
His art wasn’t always like this. After five years working in brand design for major companies like Arc’teryx, North Face and Speedo, Bugden was tired of resizing pictures for closely-managed marketing campaigns. It was time for some creativity! He quit his job and entered the Alberta University of the Arts for a degree in Visual Communications, Illustration.
“I went in there thinking, ‘I’m going to be a concept artist for a video game company and I’m going to draw all these cool, super-detailed amazing concept art drawings. And I came out drawing smiley faces and fun shapes in bright colours,” he laughs. “I think it really impacted who I became.”
Since graduating, Bugden has illustrated for many cool projects, including murals around Calgary, box designs for local and nationally-popular candle company Milk Jar, and a 3D installation for PARK. His work for the latter was described as “exploding with colour, warmth, good feelings, rainbows, and french fries.”
Lately his favourite things to draw are flowers and bugs, he says.
What does he love about creating art? “I just want to see people’s reactions. I love the smiles. I love to see people light up when they see my little dumb drawing,” he laughs.
Bugden says he had fun working on the CKUA t-shirt project. We asked about his inspiration for the design.
“It’s like, ‘I found this super funky song, here’s my boombox, listen! Listen to CKUA! The song they’re playing right now is so good!’” he says, referring to the jaunty characters on the shirt.
In his free time, Bugden likes taking excellent care of his cat, playing the video game RuneScape and of course, listening to music. Rap and hip-hop are his favourites.
The limited-edition t-shirts are also celebrating the launch of our new online store! Check out all our different fun, new t-shirts. And stay tuned, more CKUA items will be added as we move into autumn.
Cory Bugden joined Kate Steven on The Upload, Thursday July 25th to chat more about his illustration work and launch a our summer contest. Here’s their conversation:
