Karl Kofoed is a graphic artist with over 30 years of commercial advertising and promotional graphic design experience. He started his career after graduation in 1966 from the Philadelphia College of Art (majoring in illustration/minoring in photography) as a technical illustrator for the aerospace industry, then as an art director and scenic designer for two television stations.
He has worked for NW Ayer Direct in New York designing DM material for AT&T, Citicorp, and other major clients. In Philadelphia he was a product designer for Studio One Posters, where he designed what was to become the best selling poster of all time, the treed kitten of "Hang in There Baby, Friday's Coming." He worked for North American Publishing as a promotional art director for 13 trade magazines and has done recruitment advertising for two Philadelphia. agencies. As owner of Memories Restored, Karl specialized in high end photo retouching and restoration.
Karl's other career is that of a science fiction illustrator and writer. He is well known to the East Coast SF community and has done scores of book covers and interior illustrations for magazines like Analog and Asimov's SF magazine. Five of his novels have been published by BeWrite Books in the UK; Deep Ice, JOKO, Ark; and a science fiction trilogy: Jupiter's Reef, Farthest Reef, and Infinite Reef.
Karl is perhaps best known for his lavishly illustrated Galactic Geographic feature which has appeared in Heavy Metal magazine in two incarnations. It began in 1980 and ran for two years, then resumed in 1998 and continued until 2008. His pieces feature diverse and imaginative views of living alien worlds and a distinctive documentary style, which have set Karl's work apart from others in his field. Karl has always regarded the Galactic Geographic material as a single work of art, and using his computer he single-handedly designed, wrote, illustrated, and produced the Galactic Geographic Annual 3003, which he describes as a nature magazine from the future. Published by Chrysalis/Paper Tiger Books in 2003, it is still available.
Karl and his wife Janet, a popular jewelry designer, live in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania; a suburb of Philadelphia. They each have a daughter named Lisa, from previous marriages.
Exhibits and Awards
1990 Neographics Gold Award for promotional booklets and 1987 Gold Neographics Award- North American Publishing
1976 Silver Award- Delaware Valley Graphics Association for "Community Light and Sound" product catalogue.
1980- Philadelphia Art Directors Award for Illustration -Saunder Levitt Agency "Fisherman's Favorite."
Articles about Karl's work have appeared in Future Life Magazine, Isaac Asimov's SF Magazine, and Philadelphia Magazine and the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Science Fiction Retrospective show at the Bronx Museum of Art in 1981- two works friom the Galactic Geographic.
Lever House Show, NY 1986
Traveling NASA show in 1987.
One man show, Widener University, 1984.
The Art of Fantasy & SF at the Delaware Art Museum, 1990.
Best of Show 3-D, World Science Fiction Convention, Boston, 1989
Judges Choice, NY Science Fiction Convention, LUNACON 1991
Critics Choice - Washington DC SF Convention 1994, 1995
2nd place, Dream Realm Awards, JOKO, 2006