Restoring Love for the Outdoors Through Goods & Services
Stray Wild
Visual Identity Design
Creative Direction
Print & Digital Design
Illustration
Product Design
Website Design
Environmental Design
Apparel Design
Community Outreach
Event Planning
Stray Wild is a purpose-driven creative brand blending environmental advocacy with visual storytelling rooted in a deep love of the outdoors. At its core, it celebrates natural landscapes, wildlife, and the spirit of exploration through design work and outdoor-inspired goods that resonate with people who care about the planet. The practice built a reputation for accessible, warm branding and meaningful collaborations with outdoor nonprofits and retailers like REI. Every project is an extension of one belief: art can make the world better by fostering connection, awareness, and stewardship of wild places.
THE CHALLENGE
I've always known my work as an artist and designer should point toward something larger than client projects. The challenge with Stray Wild was deeply personal: build a brand that could serve as a vehicle for environmental advocacy through creative practice. Not a side project. Not a hobby. A real platform that could mesh my activist spirit, my love of aesthetics and my connection to the natural world into something tangible. The question was how to make that work as both a creative outlet and a sustainable practice. One that could reach people through products, exhibits, campaigns and collaborations with outdoor brands and nonprofits.
THE PROCESS
I built Stray Wild around a vintage National Park Service-inspired aesthetic — warm, nostalgic, rooted in the romance of public lands. That visual language became the vehicle for everything: merchandise, campaigns, murals, community programming. Self-initiated projects like GJ Clean and Create, a monthly river cleanup that turns collected litter into collaborative art, grew directly from that activist foundation. I designed the brand, the logo, the model. Every offering fed the next — goods funded awareness, awareness drew collaborators, collaborators deepened the work. Organizations like Trust for Public Lands, Wilderness Workshop and Conservation Colorado became natural partners because the mission aligned before the pitch ever did.
THE SOLUTION
Six years of proof that purpose-driven creative work sustains itself. Stray Wild merchandise landed on shelves at REI locations across Colorado. The Wilder Gallery & Gathering on Main Street in downtown Grand Junction gave the brand a physical home — part art gallery, part curated camp vintage, part community gathering space. The Clean and Create model turned environmental stewardship into a repeatable monthly program, blending river cleanup with collaborative art-making from repurposed litter. I co-founded ruralisrad.org to support rural outdoor brands, help nonprofits create brands, and built a roster of conservation collaborators that validated the entire premise. Do good work for good people. It works.
Approach
Every project follows the same process. One rooted deeply in the practice of our Signature Thataway Method. →
Solutions
Wilder Gallery & Gathering
A multisensory experience blending art, nature, curated camp vintage and outdoor awareness into headquarters for nature loving humans.
"Stray Wild to celebrate the lands, animals, waters, blue skies and tall trees we all call home. It is my way of meshing my activist spirit, my passions for aesthetics and my love of nature. Each project is approached with the idea that art can better the world."
- TJ Smith, Owner
