Our National Parks collection was designed by the ultra-talented Jonah Stowe of Stowe Collective. We caught up with for a minute to bring you some of the stories behind the designs.
Who are you/what's your story?
Stowe collective is an outdoor merch company that currently sells prints displaying iconic features from various National parks. My wife Kayla who is the life and would of the company, and I have been running the company for 2 and a half years now and have had a ton of fun seeing our business grow. Our favorite part about this little business though has been the awesome opportunities that we’ve had to meet incredible people and go to awesome places.
How'd you get into graphic design?
My entire life, my parents owned restaurants and my dad used to always ask me to make logos for each store. He had crepe restaurants, Mexican, Asian, and American and although none of my logos really turned into anything professional for him during my youth, it piqued my interest in graphic design. I loved how one mark could represent an entire brand and I loved exploring all the different ways that design could communicate without saying anything. I remember going to art museums and the graphic art pieces always stood out to me the most, even from a young age.
What inspired you with this collection?
I ended up majoring in graphic design and in my first semester a professor asked us to design a poster for something we love. At the time, I had been on a ton of climbing trips down to Moab, UT and every trip we took down there we would usually hike up to Delicate Arch at least once. I began designing the arch in tons of different ways and trying to make it as realistic as I could. But then I tried simplifying the Arch into the most basic shapes possible. That’s when I ended up with Arches National Park poster that we have today. My professors and friends encouraged me to do an entire series. I signed up for a market and almost completely sold out. That’s how Stowe Collective started. I can’t believe it all started out with a school assignment.
How did you pick the colors for each park print?
The colors are primarily due to my wife and they are inspired by each of the regions they are from. Sometimes we will pull colors from photographs and manipulate them until the contrast is right with the other colors and sometimes we just choose a color pallet that we love and make it work. Kayla is really good at matching the right colors which has honestly been one of the biggest selling points of our prints.
Any rad upcoming projects we can look out for?
While national parks have been fun, our love for nature has increased drastically and although we want to keep producing parks posters we also want to begin focusing my attention to nature conservation awareness posters that share messages with people and inform them about how to be a good steward of our awesome planet.
Favorite National Park?
My favorite national park so far would have to be the Grand Tetons. I love the Jackson Hole area and the countless hikes you can do all over the mountains there. I have a few awesome memories associated with that location but I am sure as Kayla and I visit more we will find new favorites all over.
Check out his work and see the other cool stuff he has his designs printed on HERE and shop the collection of wallets HERE!
