We’re so excited to share the new brand we designed and developed for Wildsam Field Guides, a new American travel series. Taylor and Robin were looking for a simple, bold mark that felt both timeless and current. We thoroughly enjoyed collaborating with Taylor and Robin on this project. And because Taylor is an excellent writer, well, we thought we’d let him do most of the talking:
About the field guides (source: www.wildsam.com)
Launched in the fall of 2012, Wildsam is a series of American field guides, small books with a lot of soul, packed with local lore, interviews, a cultural almanac, vignetted memoirs, a best-of list, hand-drawn maps, and much more. Our books are equal parts travel guide and tribute, for both weekender and native alike.
We often come back to a phrase written by John Steinbeck when thinking ‘about’ Wildsam. “And the world was peopled with wonders.” If you have not read East of Eden, the scene’s gist is this: an Irishman settles with his sprawling family on a dried-up spread in the Salinas Valley. One day, out digging a well with his two sons, the men hit a quarry of unfamiliar black rock. One son thinks it might be a buried locomotive. The other, some valuable ore. The father, Sam, thinking he might be looking at a fallen meteor, gets what Steinbeck describes as “that joyous faraway look” on his face. It is the very best description of curiosity in American letters, I think.
We believe Steinbeck’s words to be as true as the ground we walk on. And we make our field guides in hopes of populating their pages with those buried joys.
I love the contrast between yellow and black, works perfect