Project: Logo, Identity, Interior Consulting, Collateral Production, Merch Design, Sign design/fabrication, Creative Director for Website and Custom Art Installations.

Spartanburg, is known as the Hub City; a connection city. Its roots are train tracks. When the land for this project was purchased, there was a shipping container left from previous owners or previous neglect. 

During the capital raising phase, everyone was referring to it as Project Boxcar.

Someone was commissioned to do the initial brand and it was pretty good in my opinion. They pulled inspiration from train logos, which, if you haven’t looked them up, train logos are some of the best branding I’ve seen.

I was told that in order to start creating signs, website, collateral, etc, that I could either hire the designer to finish what he started or start over.

Being naturally insufferable, I started over. But, I liked “Boxcar.”

When I started on the moodboard, it all felt really hunk-dory, like a popsicle stand or something. Didn’t feel like my favorite, but I pulled on the train thread some more.

What about train-robbers? An Outlaw.

Now, I am the daughter of a man who once turned off all of the power in his hometown and was chased by the police all the way back to the family farm — so I’d like the say my genes influenced this, but it really was what was happening in my corner of the algorithm.

It was 2022 when we first started conceptualizing this. So, I’m going to be honest with you, we were all riding the wave of the Yellow-Stone effect.

2020, had made a lot of people invest in isolating real estate and lean into simplicity — we all wanted to live inside of a country song at the time.

Here’s the thing though, when you design brands like this that are going to go on $130,000 signs, you have to get legs out of it. The design can’t be dated in a year. You at least need to get about 7 years out of a brand that size.

I knew that the Outlaw aeshetic will never die — see Willie Nelson. But, I couldn’t keep it all what was trending at the time and it couldn’t all be about white cowboys on pretty horses. Or better yet, I wanted to redefine who was a Cowboy. It wasn’t just people who lived off the land or rode horses. It was Mac Miller, Run the Jewels, it’s stock car racing.

That was the soundtrack that helped put this brand together.