Pictured above, Anderson Design Group National Park poster art on display at the National Park Service headquarters in Washington, D.C.
Happy birthday, National Park Service!
And not just any birthday… The National Park Service was created on this day exactly 110 years ago!
On August 25, 1916, Congress and President Woodrow Wilson authorized the creation of a new federal agency, the National Park Service, to “preserve unimpaired the natural and cultural resources and values of the National Park System for the enjoyment, education, and inspiration of this and future generations.”
Pictured below: A snippet of text from Wilderness & Wonder: An Illustrated Guide to the National Parks.
Over the past 11 decades, the NPS has grown into more than 400 national parks and many programs that reach communities around the country—and even the world!
We’re thrilled to create art of the many sites the NPS manages, and to travel to as many of these sites as possible. We don't take them for granted. It was only by the good works and foresight of those who came before us that these parks exist today.
Pictured below: A snippet of text from Beyond the National Parks: Exploring the Less-Traveled National Park Sites.
Celebrating 110 Years of National Parks with Award-Winning Poster Art
Sixteen years ago, the artists of Anderson Design Group (ADG), led by Creative Director Joel Anderson, began creating original artwork of America’s National Parks.
The project built on the popularity of ADG’s growing American Travel Collection, poster art the team of artists had been rendering for some years. If the travel art of American cities was so popular, would National Park art also garner attention from travel enthusiasts in the nation and around the world?
The answer was a resounding yes.
Pictured below: ADG art of Yellowstone National Park.
Almost immediately, ADG’s national park art soared to become the most popular collection within the studio’s growing catalog. In fact, ADG’s national park posters went on to win awards, and as shown earlier, the collection has even been featured as a mural on the wall of the National Park Service headquarters, located in Washington, D.C.
Inspired by the iconic WPA-commissioned artwork of the early 1900s, ADG’s National Park poster series is meant to conjure nostalgia through design, to celebrate America’s heritage and the gift of unbridled nature with pencil, brush, and stylus. The talented artists of Anderson Design Group are finishing what the WPA began, hand-illustrating original travel poster designs for all of our National Parks (with new angles and perspectives added all the time).
This poster art is beloved for many reasons. Whether you’re creating a bucket list of places you have yet to see, or you want to remember the family road trip or cross-country adventure of a lifetime, these handcrafted works by Anderson Design Group are perfect for any living or office space, rustic cabin, or uptown suite.
Pictured below: ADG artist-collaborator Arden von Haeger's rendition of Big Bend National Park.
Original, Hand-Rendered Art at Your Fingertips, Available in a Variety of Formats, No Artificial Intelligence Involved!
One of the reasons why people love our national park art is because it looks like vintage poster art, the type of artwork that was used to promote the national parks 110 years ago when these beautiful places became protected under the umbrella of the newly formed National Park Service.
“We don’t use AI—everything we create is real art made by real artists for real art & travel lovers,” says Joel Anderson, ADG founder and Creative Director. “We hope you can see and feel the quality that goes into our American-made prints, books, and gifts. And we hope you enjoy our original creations as much as we have enjoyed producing them!”
Pictured below: ADG Creative Director and Founder, Joel Anderson, exploring Everglades National Park and posing next to Skunk Ape!
As for the variety of formats the art is presented in, you can order any of our over 3,000 original poster designs (including over 400 posters featuring the national parks and dozens more featuring national monuments and memorials) as framed prints, unframed posters, canvases, metal signs, or notecards or postcards. The art makes great gifts, too, particularly for national park adventurers and travel enthusiasts.
Coffee Table Books and Travel Guides Written to Inspire Your Adventure
Our artists and illustrators do a lot more than make art. They also travel to the parks and gain a first-person perspective on these incredible natural spaces.
Those trips are more than inspiring, and our team comes back from each trip brimming with excitement. The result? Our poster art has also inspired a series of coffee table books and travel guides, each featuring our art, written narratives, and perspectives on the places we’ve explored and documented.
Just a few of the books in our library collection are featured below:
63 Illustrated National Parks
This gorgeous book is perfect for any outdoor lover, poster art fan, or American history buff! Back in 2015, ADG founder Joel Anderson and his team of award-winning artists set out to create a poster for each National Park. Along the way, Joel and his son Nathan traveled to several parks, gathering reference, photos, and inspiration for a book that would eventually combine the entire poster series with a wealth of interesting information. Designed by the talented artists of Anderson Design Group and written by Nathan Anderson, this beautiful National Park book is truly spectacular.
The updated edition includes dozens of new illustrations, new photos, plus new hiking tips and facts. This 9” x 12” full-color hardcover coffee table book includes all 63 of our National Park posters, plus oil paintings, historic photos, a map of the USA, facts, travel tips, and the 100-year history of the National Park Service.
Pictured below: Father and son team, Joel and Nathan Anderson, pose next to the first edition of their first coffee table book, the one that launched a series of coffee table books and national park travel guides, a collection that now includes over 15 published works.
Beyond the National Parks
We began creating poster art for hundreds of the smaller historic sites, recreation areas, monuments, and memorials scattered across the nation. Beyond the National Parks is both a beautiful, decorative National Park coffee table book featuring those illustrations, and it’s a handy American travel guide with essential information about beautiful parks in your state that you may have never heard of. The result is a gorgeous book that celebrates American history, culture, and natural beauty.
Within these pages, explore America’s lesser-known wonders through the Art of Adventure. This gorgeous coffee table book is a great vacation-planning resource, a helpful guide, a unique home decor piece, a tabletop conversation starter, and a wonderful gift for anyone who loves history, travel, wilderness, and learning about the people and places that make this nation unique. The book measures 9” x 12”, is full-color, and runs 184 pages.
Pictured below: ADG Staff Writer Ren Brabenec and Joel pose with the team's newest book release, Beyond the National Parks.
Wilderness & Wonder
Enjoy a captivating journey to America’s most beloved natural lands. Wilderness & Wonder’s art of the national parks is depicted in a loose, hand-rendered dry-brush composition style accompanied by dozens of on-site photographs, hundreds of travel tips, inspiring park descriptions, historical information, and educational facts about the geology, biology, human history, and wildlife of the parks. Not only is the book visually beautiful, but it’s also easy to read (ideal for younger readers) and educational! Bonus material includes: An Illustrated History of the National Parks, A National Park Map of the USA, How the Art is Made, and a handy glossary.
This is a book for readers of all ages to explore the awe-inspiring aspects of the national parks. Perfect for outdoor lovers, travel enthusiasts, history buffs, and fans of national park poster art, the book is a tabletop decor piece, a jaw-dropping one-of-a-kind gift, and a useful national park guidebook all in one.
Pictured below: Artist-collaborator Kenneth Crane poses in Denali National Park with the book he envisioned and illustrated, Wilderness and Wonder (creative direction by Joel Anderson and research/writing by Ren Brabenec).
63-Park National Park Adventure Guide Book
Without a doubt, this bestseller is one of our most popular items. The newly updated 63-Park edition of the National Park Adventure Guide is better than ever. This super fun and useful guide is a must-have for any trip to the National Parks. The updated version includes information on recently added parks, including New River Gorge, White Sands, Indiana Dunes, and Gateway Arch.
The guide features information about each park, tips on things to do in the parks, space for note-taking, fun facts about each park, and of course a plethora of Anderson Design Group vintage National Park art! The guide also includes stickers for each park, so you can place a sticker on the insert of a park every time you visit a new park.
Pictured below: ADG's Adventure Guide in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. Photo by Ren Brabenec.
Legends Of The National Park Guide Book
The artists of Anderson Design Group have spent years documenting the wilderness and wonder of America’s National Parks. During our adventures in the parks, we’ve run across scary, bizarre, and fantastic legends of mythical creatures reported to have inhabited many of the parks and surrounding areas. We began collecting creepy accounts of strange creatures—like Bigfoot, the Jackalope, the Wendigo, or visitors from outer space. We collected tall tales of unexplainable events, ancient myths, and stories passed down by Indigenous Peoples, colonial settlers, and park visitors over the last two centuries.
We have created a repository of cryptid information, pinpointing the various National Parks where each legend originated. Maps, captions, facts, and infographics bring these mysterious creatures to life in this handy, pocket-sized guidebook. The legends are retold and amplified with information about each creature’s powers and characteristics, along with plausible natural explanations for how each mystery may have come to be.
Pictured below: Joel Anderson poses with Legends of the National Parks in Everglades National Park.
National Park Puzzles, Playing Cards, Board Games, Activity Sets, and More
We didn’t stop at poster art and illustrated coffee table books and travel guides. To celebrate the parks through fun, non-digital social activities, we also created jigsaw puzzles featuring our art, plus playing cards, memory games, board games, coloring books, paint-by-numbers prints, and wall calendars.
Pictured below, National Park playing cards.
Here’s to Another 110 years!
For our team at Anderson Design Group, celebrating the parks is something we do because we deeply appreciate these spaces and want them to remain protected for generations to come. Each year, we donate a portion of our profits to the National Park Foundation. Your purchase helps protect America’s National Parks!
Pictured below, The Anderson boys in Sequoia National Park.
We’ve created original artwork for every national park on the roster, as well as many of the lesser-known-yet-no-less-beautiful National Park Service-managed sites across the country.
We’ll keep making art, and we thank you so much for supporting our small family business. We couldn’t do what we love without you.
Here’s to another 110 years!
-Ren Brabenec
Anderson Design Group Staff Writer
Pictured below, Staff Writer Ren Brabenec and collaborating artist Kenneth Crane in Isle Royale National Park.
