Chris Noel is the founder and president of Particle, a graphic design firm in Gaithersburg, Maryland that has enjoyed a reputation for excellence since 1987. Chris has over 25 years of design experience working with corporate, retail and non-profit clients to produce all forms of print collateral, corporate and product identity systems, product packaging and web site design. His interest in design started after high school experimenting with the simple graphic qualities of abstract painting. He holds a BFA in Communication Arts and Design from Virginia Commonwealth University (Summa Cum Laude). Previous employment includes design positions at Bagby Design Group in Chicago, the Corporate Communications Department of Best Products, a former Fortune 500 Catalog Retailer in Richmond, VA and Creative Director for Chaddick and Kimbal in Washington, DC.

Chris’s work as a designer and an art director has been published in Print, Communication Arts, Graphis, How, and Art Direction magazines, and his company has been profiled in Novum magazine, Full Bleed magazine, and the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) Newsletter. His work has also been exhibited in group design shows at the Anderson Gallery in Richmond, VA and at the Corcoran Gallery and the American Institute of Architects in Washington, DC, among many others. His poster design for Duke Ellington, Beyond Category, a Smithsonian Institution exhibit, is part of the permanent collection of the Library of Congress.

He has received over 200 design awards for his work for some very high-profile clients like the Smithsonian Institution, PBS, Honest Tea and the Internal Revenue Service. Chris is a member of the Art Directors Club of Metropolitan Washington and the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) and a former board member for AIGA’s Washington, DC chapter. Chris is also a partner and the Creative Director for Folioplanet.com, a web site used by art directors, designers, creative directors, and other art buyers to locate professional illustrators’ web sites and artist-owned stock illustration.

Most recently Chris’s interests have turned to painting. His “debris paintings”, as he calls them, are collections of discarded elements that take on new meaning when reassembled and brushed, rolled and dabbed with vivid color. Though not a painter by trade, Chris has always been fascinated with abstract painting and his many years as a graphic designer have made him a perpetual student of color, form, and composition. His most recent show at the BlackRock Center for the Arts in Germantown, Maryland was featured in The Gazette Newspaper and on Maryland Public Television’s ArtWorks This Week.

His paintings have a very spontaneous quality that is arrived at through a well-thought-out design process. In fact he considers them to be more graphic design than painting, blurring the line between fine art and design. He refers to his style as Post-Consumer Realism because of his use of discarded items that most people would consider to be waste or trash.