The Beautiful Art of Missing Pet Posters

One of the saddest design projects a person can create is making a poster for a lost pet. But it is also perhaps one of the most beautiful creations a person can make. After all, it came from the heart.

… as Canadian artist Ian Phillips reveals in Lost: Lost and Found Pet Posters from Around the World, many of these posters end up as moving artistic homages to our animals. “The posters are like little mystery stories,” Philips writes in an email. “They’re quickly made and filled with so many emotions.”

In the 1990s, after helping his roommate find her lost cat, Philips became obsessed with finding and collecting missing pet posters–he sent out an open call for people around the world to send them to him, to be compiled in a zine circulated among his art-world friends. His collection, now published in a book, comes from six continents, harvested from telephone poles, car windshields, and bulletin boards. (Phillips instructed submitters to make photocopies of the posters they sent and to hang up more than they took down.)

Via Amusing Planet

Have you made a missing pet poster before? How was your experience in doing so?

(Image Credit: The Amusing Planet)