The Joshua Tree House collaboration with friends, a case study.
The Joshua Tree House is a hospitality project by Sara and Rich Combs with locations near US National Parks in Joshua Tree, California and Tucson, Arizona. Collaborating with my friends to bring illustration and merch to their brand has proven that
When my friends, Sara and Rich Combs moved to Joshua Tree full time, my first visit to see them was the very first time I had even seen a desert. I quickly saw what they loved about the place; the open space to breathe and think, the room to create, and the inspiring community of the small town. Together we designed a bandana to celebrate the flora and fauna of their remote world, including their 1969 International Scout.
Sara and Rich wrote a book about their lives in the desert called At Home in Joshua Tree, a Field Guide to Desert Living and asked me to contribute a series of illustrations to catalogue the local wildlife as a bestiary. They also used illustrative icons from the Joshua Tree bandana design throughout the book.
After discovering an abandoned inn for sale on the border of Saguaro National Park in Tucson, Arizona, Sara and Rich were able to expand their vision of creating creative spaces accommodating national parks. The inn (also known as “Posada”) needed branding and sign painting, so I went and lived on-site for the week before opening. I designed and painted way-finding signage, a “pool rules” sign, and the main sign for the front of the inn. As an additional surprise to Sara and Rich, I designed and hand-printed a series of 50 unique bandanas to be given as souvenirs to guests of the opening party.
Thousands of suitcases, all hand-painted
Collaborating with multiple teams within the company for special projects and gaining insight into celebrity gifting
AWAY struck a magic chord of having a great product, gathering some much-talked-about funding, and hitting a steady output of press all at the exact right time which sent the company on a swift upward trajectory. The popularity of my hand painted monograms swung with it, and I needed to hire some help. The FIT Job Board connected me to illustrator majors Mary Bova and Anna Niklova; and my dear friend Karen Dooley joined me mostly just to learn the technique, not knowing she would be totally roped into this whole thing and imminently hired full time. Karen managed our small team of artists and grew it into a wild group of full-time painters, industry freelancers, aspirational art students, and fulfillment dudes with impeccable music taste and crucially good senses of humor. At its peak, the AWAY Monogram Team employed over 20 artists and 5 fulfillment and repairs specialists. I designed the alphabets and trained the painters, who then trained other painters, and on and on.
Our monogram studio setup went from the cramped basement stockroom of the first AWAY store on Crosby, to a room at Industry City stocked floor-to-ceiling, to taking over the entire square footage of the second AWAY office (another luxury SoHo apartment!) on Greene Street, to a full floor of the massive AWAY corporate office on Broadway, and then back to Industry City again. At one point I was even given my very own “studio” in the entire basement at 93 Mercer Street, where I painted over 1,200 cases for a special project with YouTube over the course of a month.
As a roving freelancer I was able to collaborate with multiple teams within Away on projects such as VIP/influencer gifting, corporate gifting, special in-store monogramming events at AWAY and Nordstrom locations, in-office murals, product designs, and employee thank-you gifts.
Between 2015-2020 we painted thousands and thousands of suitcases together. The co-founders, especially Steph Korey, were constant advocates for hand painting even when their growth had a couple eager employees salivating at the chance to optimize! and try to offer worse quality for higher turnover - something our team refused. We consistently put out luxurious, hand painted little gems that customers adored - and that would last even the most egregious bag handler’s worst day. Maybe you’ve seen them out and about in the airports or on the train - I have! And I can still tell who painted which by the tiny differences in style - Anna’s slender downstrokes, Karen’s lefthanded flair, Kurt’s skilled C curves, Mary’s being the most opaque, and mine are notable for being the fattest with little stylistic twists at the ends of crossbars on E’s and F’s and T’s, etc.
I will randomly get emails from previous customers who want to talk or have questions about those special little monograms!
And in 2020, well, you can maybe guess what might have happened to a barely profitable creative team dedicated to hand painted art at a now-corporate startup in the travel industry during an unprecedented time when travel was halted.
I hear they have a robot that prints their monograms now! Which I’m sure is far more efficient and makes more sense for a brand of their size (but I think we can all agree is way, way less cool, right?).