Joan Cox
Senior Designer
New Orleans. It’s hard to know Joan Cox unless you think of New Orleans. Living there, she captured the city in oil on canvas. Big, bright, splashy pictures of a big, bright, splashy city. Looking at her work, you can almost hear the hiss of the gaslights, smell the bougainvillea, feel the Garden District.
But New Orleans conjures other things. Yes, Katrina. Having lived through it, Joan decided to return to the East Coast, near to her native Baltimore, back to the world of graphic design.
The qualities that make her paintings so fresh — color, texture, composition — also distinguish her design work. A graduate of Towson University, her career has taken her to boutique firms and corporate design shops. She’s created award-winning work for Fortune 500s — think Coca-Cola, Raytheon — and local non-profits. Logos, Web sites, brochures, reports.
Each time the process is the same. Visualize the final work, then build it layer by layer, piece by piece. She’s done it that way since she was a child. Always had an eye for composition, color. Call her a “natural.” From a child’s crayon to a designer’s mouse. Always the artist.
She’s still painting, exhibiting her work. And once again creating exciting Web designs, corporate identities, print materials. Each one has a fresh look, a dash of color, a unique feel that whispers ever so faintly, “New Orleans.”