Rendering America for Over 30 Years and Taking a Walk on the Wild Side
We just celebrated America's 250th birthday, and our award-winning poster artists had a moment to reflect on the decades they've spent hand-rendering the most incredible places in the nation, all in the style and fashion of the Golden Age of Illustration and the retro travel art that first inspired people to get out and explore America.
These original travel posters and illustrated American and World destinations look like vintage poster art, but they are new, original designs made by contemporary illustrators and artists. They are also available in a variety of sizes and styles, including posters, framed prints, canvases, metal signs, and sets of notecards and postcards.
In recent years, we’ve enjoyed taking a walk on the wild side, exploring the mythical monsters and fairytale places we’ve only heard about but never actually seen.
That being said, in all our travels, we’ve heard about these creatures and places a lot, and from numerous sources, and every time we’d hear about them, we’d get inspired to create art of these mythological creatures and mysterious travel destinations.
This is our invitation to you. Take a walk on the wild side with us! Much of the beauty and splendor of the world remains to be explored. Is it possible that mythical creatures and mythological monsters are hiding in the most remote places? Is it likely there are ancient fantasy travel destinations that once existed or that perhaps still exist?
We can’t say for sure, but we can enjoy reading about them, studying reference materials, and commemorating them with vintage-style poster art.
We present to you… Legends of the National Parks and Fantasy Travel!
Art of Mythical Monsters and Legends of the National Parks
If you’ve ever been out walking in a national park or wilderness space and you felt like you were being watched, there’s a chance you were in the presence of a mystical creature! How do we know? Because we’ve felt this sensation more times than we can count…
The artists of Anderson Design Group have spent decades documenting the wilderness and wonder of America’s national parks, monuments, recreation areas, wilderness refuges, seashores, lakeshores, rivers, and wide open spaces where the animal kingdom still reigns supreme and humans are in the minority.
We’ve explored, rendered posters, written books, and photographed the nation’s most cherished public lands. During our research and adventures in the parks, we’ve also run across some pretty exciting legends. We’ve heard horror stories about strange creatures that others have seen, heard, or felt.
We’ve uncovered tall tales of inexplicable events, ancient myths, and local stories passed down by Indigenous Peoples, colonial settlers, and park visitors. Many of the legends we’ve come across are based on Native American folklore. To the best of our ability, we’ve indicated which tribes were associated with each story, while respecting the sacred traditions of Indigenous beliefs.
As we continued to dig deeper, we realized that cultures from every continent have their own rich mythological traditions featuring bizarre, creepy, and quirky legendary beings. So we began exploring and depicting magical, mystical monsters from all over the planet. We hope you enjoy our Legends Of The National Parks art and our Mythical Creatures from Around the World, too!
From mythical monsters to mythological creatures to ghosts, spirits, strange animals, ghouls, aliens, anthropomorphic humanoids, hybrid species, and haunting apparitions, this collection of legendary creature art is sure to have you on the edge of your seat and both excited and fearful of your next national park adventure.
Additional Contributions to Legends of the National Parks: The Arden von Haeger Collection
Anderson Design Group has collaborated with master pastel artist Arden von Haeger for years. First, Arden and ADG worked together to produce a series of vintage-looking posters featuring the national parks. Arden’s classic hand-rendered illustration style conveys grandeur, romance, and nuance. His inventive use of color and unique Art Deco styling evoke a bygone elegance as he celebrates some of America’s most iconic destinations. In the national park series, Arden evoked the romantic aspects of the national parks in his unique artistic style.
ADG founder Joel Anderson describes his friend’s work: “Arden is a modern-day master. His handling of color, light, and shape evoke a feeling of timeless, historic beauty. His compositions remind me of the epic Works Progress Administration-era masterpieces of the Early 20th Century that moved America. Arden’s creations are ingeniously stylized, artfully simplified, and powerfully amplified, enabling him to tell a familiar story in a whole new way.”
More recently, Arden and ADG began working on a new collection, Arden’s contribution to the Legends of the National Parks collection. He started with an eerie depiction of the Wendigo, and when he finished the illustration, he attached a caption to it, which reads:
“In the cold hush of a moonlit forest, the Wendigo emerges like a nightmare pulled from the bones of winter itself. Its gaunt frame, crowned with antlers and draped in tattered fur, moves with an eerie silence that feels both ancient and hungry. This haunting vision captures the creature as a shadow of wilderness and legend, mysterious, unsettling, and impossible to forget.”
Arden is fully committed to preserving the ancient myths, urban legends, and folklore of America’s mythological monsters and mythical creatures. His work can be found in the Legends of the National Parks collection and in the Arden von Haeger collection.
Products Featuring Mythical Monsters of the National Parks
If you’re a fan of mythical monster art and mystical creature posters, you will love the line of products we put together featuring these original designs. From postcards to blankets, games to stickers, coloring books, puzzles, pillows, and calendars, this collection of art-themed gifts, games, toys, and decor items is perfect for holiday gift-giving and birthday celebrations.
From Literary Destinations to Visitors from Another World, Fantasy Travel Art Invites You to Explore Beyond the Beaten Path
We know about the places around the country and world that beckon us to visit them, but what about the places that no one really knows if they exist or not? Or that may have existed at one point, but now no one remembers where to find them?
For years, the artists at Anderson Design Group have been depicting the world’s most-visited travel destinations in the classic style of the 20th Century’s golden age of travel poster art. Recently, ADG founder Joel Anderson and his talented team of illustrators began to research ancient wonders, legendary landmarks, lost cities, and mythological marvels—places that would be on any adventure lover’s list—if only they could be reached!
Team ADG began rendering fantastic travel posters of distant destinations. By following their wanderlust into the past via anthropology, archaeology, and artistic license, a new collection of poster (and postcard) art was born. This is the Fantasy Travel collection in all its mysterious glory!
Some of our most popular designs from this collection are of places that do exist, but that are shrouded in mystery. For example, our Area 51 poster looks like a 1950s B-rate Sci-Fi movie poster, perfect for fans of cult classics and followers of alien news and UFO sleuthing.
Area 51 is a highly classified U.S. Air Force facility located in the Nevada desert. For years, there was speculation about the installation, especially amid growing reports of UFO sightings in the vicinity. Conspiracy theories gained support in the late 1980s, when a man claiming to have worked at the installation also claimed that the government was examining recovered alien spacecraft!
Other illustrations in this collection that have garnered dedicated fans include depictions of physical locations that serve as anchors for stories and legends in books and novels.
Some of the most fascinating aspects of the tales we all grew up reading are not just the characters, but the worlds they lived in and the landmarks that often centered those stories. Case in point, Castle Dracula is the epic location where an iconic vampire was said to have lived. It is the fictitious residence of Count Dracula, the vampire antagonist in Bram Stoker’s 1897 horror novel Dracula.
Commemorate Your Journey with the Art of Adventure
“Our fans use our art to tell their stories. When they display our prints, they ‘Decorate With Adventure’. So I guess you could say we are all about The Art Of Adventure!”
That’s ADG Founder and Creative Director, Joel Anderson, in an interview about the artists and ethos of Anderson Design Group. In addition to creating the art of adventure, Joel and ADG have doubled down on human-made art and products and on the importance of leveraging human talent and creativity. That means AI is never used in anything Anderson Design Group creates, ever.
At our last count, ADG had produced over 3,000 original poster designs, plus dozens of products such as books, calendars, games, puzzles, stickers, playing cards, apparel, pillows, blankets, and more.
But we’re just getting started. Stay tuned for more art to come!
-Ren Brabenec
Anderson Design Group Staff Writer