A BEITH man is one of the finalists in a competition to design a new pen.

Europe’s leading stationery brand, BIC, has announced the nine finalists of the 2018 Design and Shine competition, with PhD student Raymond Holder from Beith, making it through to a public vote which will select the overall winner.

Following the public vote between August 27 and September 9, the winning design will be put into production and the talented winner will also be offered a £3,000 prize to fuel their thirst for design, in whatever form they please.

Raymond, a freelance motion graphics artist who’s currently studying for a PhD in Virtual Reality Gamification, said: “Illustration and digital painting are a passion of mine. I wanted to represent something that could be drawn with all four colours of the pen and a butter fly sprung to mind.

“Hopefully if people like my design they’ll vote for me and if it’s put into production I hope that design inspires people to use all four colours the pen offers.”