News

August marks the 102nd anniversary of three of our “hottest” parks: Haleakala National Park, Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park, and Lassen Volcanic National Park.  Though both Haleakala and Hawai’i Volcanoes were established as their own separate parks in 1960 and 1961, their geologic magnificence led Congress (with the influence of Congressmen and their wives having dinner cooked over steam vents years before) to create Hawaii National Park in 1916, which included both volcanoes. Maui’s Haleakala is a dormant volcano that last erupted in 1790. Northern California’s Lassen Peak is an active volcano that most famously erupted in 1915. Hawaii’s (or The...

One of our favorite parts about coming into work each day (besides getting paid to draw cool pictures) is interacting with our fans. Y'all are the life blood of this company & your passion for travel (especially to America's National Parks) inspires us constantly. Last month, we reached out to our email followers & asked them to share their favorite Park memories with us. Thus began a two week process of reading, laughing, and tearing up just a bit as we read their stories & ooo'd and ahhh'd at their photography (gotta love the high def quality of today's cell phones)....

Music City is full of fun opportunities and wonderful people. Recently, we found ourselves working on a dream project for one of our favorite bands—Riders In The Sky. The band's manager asked us to help the two-time Grammy winning group celebrate their 40th Anniversary. So we created an illustration that was used for their Anniversary poster, CD and tour book. ADG staff artist Aaron Johnson took the lead on the illustration, using reference from some of his Monument Valley posters. When the Riders played a show in Franklin, TN, Creative Director and ADG founder Joel Anderson adapted Aaron's art by adding it to a classic Franklin Theatre...

When Joel Anderson is not working on poster art, he likes to tinker in his home studio making art from found objects. He quips: "I spend a lot of time in front of a computer at the office studio, so sometimes, I want to play with power tools, toys and paint brushes. When I need to get out of the digital world and get my hands dirty, I often end up in my garage or basement, rummaging through bins of objects that I have been collecting over the years. I separate the curious things I find into groups of wood, metal, glass,...

It's the end of July and we just sent the files for our Illustrated Guide to Great Smoky Mountains National Park book over to the press. Months of research/writing/editing are finally over and now we get to see what all of our labor will look like in hardback. It's like the child we've been raising for the last 8 months is about to start their first day of school. We've fed it, cleaned it up, put it in "time out" once or twice, and tried to give it enough self-confidence to stand on its own. Now it's time to let it out into...