Upon landing in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in the dead of winter, I was confronted by a violently flat landscape flanked by two imposing mountain ranges. This landscape was far from anything I’d seen on the east coast. Clearly, I was no longer in New Jersey.
Just as the landscapes couldn’t be more different from one another, so too was the design aesthetics. Slab serif and American Wood Type fonts littered shop signs and local apparel in a way that would be cliché anywhere else. In the age of lowercase initials and san serif fonts, rarely do we see design that is ‘fun’. The Cowboy Bar in Teton has a larger-than-life sign filled with light bulbs on the front facade of the building that screams I’m Western! The Wells Fargo logo featuring a stagecoach blends seamlessly with other businesses around it.
Jackson Hole and the surrounding area leans into its own stereotype. The town of Teton has four arches made entirely of elk antlers in the town square: elk antlers! Oh, and of course I cannot travel all the way to Wyoming and not mention the Bucking Cowboy.
The iconic silhouette of a cowboy riding a bronco is the Air Jordan of this state, and I don’t mean in the sense that Wyoming is the new spot for athletic footwear. There is built in tension with each logo in the midst of action. Jordan is on the eve of a spectacular dunk and this nameless cowboy is holding on despite everything the horse is trying to do.
Should you decide to travel to Wyoming, you’ll find the Bucking Cowboy slapped onto just about everything you’d expect to find in a gift shop: shot glasses, bottle openers, stickers, hats, etc. You won’t find any Jordans in Wyoming. What you will find is design that is synonymous with that of the Rockies and the West. An aesthetic that’s charming and authentic there, even if it becomes a cliché elsewhere.