As is pretty well-documented on these pages, we like what do a lot. ‘Making the world a prettier place’—as we put it in our bio—by creating what we consider to be strong design for clients working for progressive causes is a pretty great way to spend your days so far as we can tell.
But when it comes down to, no matter how great the client and how great the work, sometimes you just want to do something for yourself, you know? We started to realize this with our holiday cards especially, as we became aware that we started to look forward to the work involved in making them every year; they scratched an itch in a way that other work didn’t and struck us as something that was very “us” in form and style and inspiration—something we controlled from start-to-finish, which we really liked.
So we started brainstorming other projects in that ilk and arrived at large scale illustrations of Los Angeles’ famed mountain lion, P-22. We’ve always been fascinated by the dichotomy between the heavily developed, urban nature of Los Angeles and its wild side—at 4,210 acres, Griffith Park is one of the largest parks within city borders in the United States. Our neighborhood runs right up against the park and, from the roving packs of coyotes to the red tail hawks seen soaring overhead, the feral side of the city is constantly on display for us. No single animal better represents that schizophrenic LA strangeness than our neighbor, P-22, who mysteriously and safely somehow traversed multiple freeways to make his way to Griffith years back and, up until recently, enjoyed a solitary existence as the only panther in the park.
With holiday cards, one of us (Troy) focuses on the image illustration and the other (Katie) focuses on the custom typography; with these prints, Troy’s still focusing on image illustration and we’re employing set typography for the text in our design, which we had printed by the same letterpress company we use for our cards. In this case, they printed on 13″x19″ fluorescent white 300GSM, heavyweight cotton rag stock using their large-scale cylinder press for a high-quality, archival style print with a nice, noticeable feel and impression on the paper. We had a limited run of 100 made and Katie’s been hand-watercoloring them one-by-one; each totally different, each totally unique, and each numbered and signed by the two of us.
To date, we’ve only had the prints for sale in some local shops we love—namely, The Canyon in Franklin Village, Los Angeles County Store in Los Feliz/Silver Lake, and MooShoes Los Angeles (which, full disclosure, we run). You can still get the prints at those fine shops, but, as of today, we’re also taking orders ourselves via email and through our socials (mainly Instagram), billing via PayPal, and shipping them straight to your doorstep. Because we love you.
In honor of P-22 and keeping LA wild, we’re also donating 10% of our total proceeds to CLAW—Citizens for Los Angeles Wildlife—a local non-profit working to protect and restore wildlife environments in Los Angeles and California. Their mission is to promote, educate, and protect the fundamental importance of wildlife, wildlife habitats, and wildlife corridors everywhere. You can find out more about their work work and how to get involved on their site.
So, if you’re interested in buying a print for yourself or as a gift, email us or message us through IG and let us know if you have any painting preferences—colors, painting inside and/or outside the panther form, that kind of thing. We obviously can’t honor every request exactly, per se, given the nature of the process, but we’ll do our best. We’re selling them for $48, will write you back with shipping options once you give us your zip code, and then send an invoice through PayPal.
Thanks for helping us keep LA wild!
