The Outdoor Archive

A compelling presentation of outdoors magazines and catalogue covers taken from the archives and featuring seventy brands including Salomon and The North Face.

For decades, outdoor brands have put daring and aspirational images on the covers of their magazines and catalogues, pushing the limits of photography and graphic design. This fascinating collection of outdoors covers, drawn from the Outdoor Recreation Archive at Utah State University and spanning one hundred years, features seventy iconic outfits including Columbia, The North Face and Snow Peak. Together, they make up a stunning visual sequence that traverses generations, sports, styles and continents, and holds something for creatives of all persuasions.

The images, from grainy climbing photographs to homely illustrations of happy campers and cinematic landscapes, are organized artfully by medium – from nature (outdoors photography) to processed (treated photography), remixed (collage) to lines (illustration), object (product photography) to words (typography). Lead-in texts provide an overview of the scope and creative opportunities afforded by each medium, while interspersed throughout are a series of pieces written by guest contributors. Specially commissioned, these personal reflections – by more than twenty industry leaders, designers, creatives and sportspeople, including photographer Chris Burkard, designer Jeff Staple and climber Conrad Anker – home in on a particular image and explore what it means to them. Four 8-page inserts, meanwhile, printed on a different paper stock, reveal a selection of fascinating pages from inside the catalogues. A concluding ‘Making Of’ section gives a behind-the-scenes look inside the archive, while a visual index provides a fresh way of viewing the images and further inspiration for designers and other creatives.

Carefully crafted, with an unfurling sequence of varied and impactful covers from across several decades, The Outdoor Archive is an enviable resource for graphic designers and creative studios, and a covetable item in its own right.