Past Design Contest Winner's Showcase

Hey Golden Coil Fam! We have just closed up our most recent Design Contest, and we are soooo excited to announce the 2024 winner! It is truly our absolute favorite time of the year because we get to interact with so many amazing artists and view the best designs out there! We are always humbled by the number of entries we receive and we are so grateful for the creative designers that take the time to enter. This year we had just over 1200 entries! We can’t wait to showcase our top 10 choices and finally our #1 top pick. In the meantime, we thought it would be fun to take a trip down memory lane with some of our past design contest winners.


Starting with our very 1st winner from 2017, Hannah Brooks! We were thrilled with the bold, bright colors of this design and who can pass up on a perfect floral cover?!


Then came Kenzie Riding in 2018. We absolutely loved the minimal background paired with the color scheme and design.

In 2019, Erin Wilson won our design contest!

Erin Wilson shared her inspiration for her design in an interivew we did with her. She said, “I knew I wanted to create a design that would feel at home in any season. My design has foliage for spring and summer, bare branches for autumn and pine boughs for winter. A good neutral color works in any season, and I'm still in love with pink, so a really soft blush like the one on my cover shows up in my work often.”

Michelle Parascandolo 2020

Michelle shared a little more detail in our interview with her about her winning design, “Like most of my work, flowers and nature were the main inspiration! For this design, I didn't have a super clear goal of what I wanted it to look like, but more of the feeling I wanted it to create. I was imagining a whimsical, enchanted floral scene, and picked a color palette that really created that feeling for me.”

Mckenzie Nielson 2021

We absolutely LOVED what Mckenzie had to share about her inspiration for her design. “Rainbows seem to be very trendy right now, and I can't say I'm mad about it! I love the symbolism behind rainbows. There are so many different kinds. For me, they represent my rainbow baby after the loss of my first. So naturally, they are showing up in a lot of my work. For the Golden Coil cover design contest, I wanted to create a pattern that could be widely used by different people. Although I love color, I didn't necessarily want this pattern to scream rainbow, so I kept it calm and neutral. I really tried to design a cover that I would want to have on my own Golden Coil planner.”

Charlie Rowan Designs 2022

When we interviewed Ryann Scrafford, she shared with us how she stays creatively inspired and we thought it may inspire some of you too! She said, “Being outside is my greatest source of inspiration, but also getting quiet, spending large uninterrupted time away from the normal busy of everyday life. Scheduling in time to unplug has been one of the best things I've done for my creativity and also surrounding myself with a community of incredibly talented creative individuals is beyond inspiring.”

Anee Shah 2023

Something Anee shared how she comes up with designs on our interview with her, which we loved hearing. She said, “I'm an intuitive painter and I typically dive into a painting without knowing how it will turn out in the end. Most days I'm translating what I'm feeling or what I'm seeking at the moment. I try to evoke a sense of calm, rest and a feeling of nostalgia through my warm florals or expansive moody landscapes. Once the painting is done, I scan it at a high resolution, clean it up in photoshop and get it ready for printing on products or as fine art prints.”

We are so excited to see who our 2024 winner will be, and we need your help voting on our Instagram! Go take a look at our top designs and let us know what you want to see on your future planners and notebooks!

Blog Manager