“It is a simple task to make things complex, but a complex task to make things simple.” —Olaya

Germán Olaya was born in 1979 in a poor Colombian hospital. He presently lives in Santafé de Bogotá. He has always resided in South America, but that has not limited his artistic exposure, in the year 2000, he teamed up with Thomas Brodahl (from Luxemburg) and Yohan Gingras (from Canada), for the launch of a design e-zine. The e-zine was titled, “Surfstation.lu,” and only in a few months, it became an international success.

His artwork is well-known for its characteristic combination of digital art with typefaces. Typography has been a fascination for Germán. He first tried to learn as much as possible about the medium before creating his own fonts. “I got involved with typography when I learnt it was possible to create it on my own. Initially, I was excited about downloading all kinds of shitty fonts off the web. As time went on, I found a site worthwhile with an extraordinary design - a project called ‘Sound of Print” by designers Jay David and Bradford Cox. It definitely inspired me to a new level of font envisionment. I began creating fonts with CorelDRAW (e.g. Kab and Chatoband) and a month later I bought Macromedia Fontographer (a professional software for typographers). The next step was displaying my fonts online, thus launching typo5.com my personal portfolio site,” explains Germán.

In the past two years, Germán has worked as a professional web designer for several agencies in Bogotá. He has done online projects for his Government, for American and Colombian companies, and for twice2.ch, a Switzerland snowboard company.

Even though he is living in the tropical climate of Colombia, he has done much design work for snowboard companies. “I know there is snow somewhere in my country... but I have never been there. My first contact with snowboards was when Johan of twice2.com, he had asked me last year to hand design some boards. I accepted immediately. The only thing I did was look at hundreds of snowboard designs, before plunging into my own creation.” Germán’s consists of the use of dirty deco, bold shapes, color contrast, and unique typography - all which make his showcase very impressive. Germán was finalist in Monson Snowboard Design Contest (2001-2002).

Additionally, he is studying graphic design in the University of Jorge Tadeo Lozano in Colombia, while maintaining and designing various sites such as typo5.com, surfstation.lu and more recently pushstudio.tv and inword.com. As for hobbies, he spends time playing video games, and also enjoys cooking. “The other day I cooked pasta and it was successful!”