Welcome to This Is Plan B. My name is Chris Bentzen and I'm a freelance graphic designer, artist, button maker and creative consultant from Vancouver, Canada. An Emily Carr Institute and University of BC graduate, I hold Bachelor degrees in Visual Communication Design and Psychology. I'm also co-creator of a little Vancouver art show known as Hot One Inch Action... maybe you've heard of it?
My current focus is on graphic design and buttons for artists, bikers and bicycle-related projects, non-profits, social and cultural organizations, environmental and community groups, and creative businesses including design of Momentum Magazine, a bi-monthly bicycle magazine.
So what is plan B? Douglas Coupland wrote in his 1998 novel Girlfriend in a Coma: "Plan B is this: You’re to be different now. Your behavior will be changing. Your thinking is to change. And people will watch these changes in you and they’ll come to experience the world in your new manner... Didn’t you feel as if all of the symbols and ideas fed to you since birth had become worn out like old shoes? Didn’t you ache for change but you didn’t know how to achieve it? And even if you knew how to do it, would you have had the guts to go forth? Didn’t you want your cards shuffled in a different way?... Every day for the rest of your lives, all of your living moments are to be spent making others aware of this need — the need to probe and drill and examine and locate the words that take us beyond ourselves.... Scrape. Feel. Dig. Believe. Ask." This inspired me to do something different.
In my own way, I like to affect change and to challenge how people look at the world... to "shuffle your cards" and find ways to create new meaning. That's essentially what creativity is about: finding new context and meaning for old ideas.
