Kings Island Poster Winners
Danny's Poster design was one of the three winners for King's Island 50th Anniversary competition.
May 2022:
This spring Kings Island called on artists to submit work showing their love of the 364-acre amusement and water park for the chance to win prizes and to be featured in the park’s art show this month.
The Art Competition closed May 13, with the first, second and third place winners notified May 20:
First Place: Leif King, “Planet Kings Island”
Second Place: Alex Metz, “Kings Island – All Grown Up”
Third Place: Danny Caro, “All Grown Up”
The artists visited Kings Island June 4 to see their pieces of art on display in the Emporium on International Street, meet guests, sign posters of their art and pose for photographs.
The artists explained the inspiration for their pieces:
King – “Planet Kings Island was inspired by the present and past of Kings Island’s most beloved rides, using some of the park’s old map layouts as reference. My rendition of The Beast character itself was unleashed from the scenes of the original commercial of The Beast from 1979, the Biggest, Baddest, Longest, Fastest coaster in the world! It was created out of love for the park, and I hope you can see and feel it too.”
Metz – “As a huge fan of the park, I've seen a lot of hand-drawn or hand-painted concept art for various attractions in the past, such as The Beast and WaterWorks. Travel posters from the early 20th century are one of my favorite styles of art. This was my take on combining the two in a 1970's style, to imagine what a travel poster for Kings Island might have looked like in the park's early years.”
Caro – “My inspiration came from trying to find one thing that everyone loves about Kings Island, and that I found to be the blue ice cream. Although the blue ice cream hasn't been around the full 50 years, it has been a staple of Kings Island for most of that. I wanted to tell a story of a young kid getting the blue ice cream on the day it launched in 1982, and it being a part of them growing up that they eventually introduced it to their own kids. I thought a time traveling bench, showing past and present, before and after would paint the best picture of my inspiration.”
The art will be on display in the Emporium through June 30, 2022. Posters of each piece of art are available to purchase while supplies last.
