Creating wonder of the wilderness
Lipscomb alumnus Nathan Anderson helps Americans nationwide create memories through vintage-inspired illustrations of U.S. National Parks.
Posted 1-2-25
When Nathan Anderson (LA ’09, BA ’13) graduated with his writing degree, he wasn’t sure what destination he was headed toward. He certainly didn’t expect the path to lead him to the United States’ 63 national parks.
And yet, two years later, he and his family climbed into a Winnebago® for a trip to the nation’s national parks, a decision that led to him writing his first book, a successful product line for his family’s business, and park visitors from shore to shore recognizing the artwork produced by Anderson Design Group (ADG).
If you have been in the gift shop of any of today’s U.S. national parks; seen park stickers for “bucket list” water bottles on Instagram; fabric, prints, posters or postcards on Etsy; or the Legends of the National Parks Guide Book on Amazon, they are all the descendants of the original Illustrated National Parks and National Park Adventure Guide written by Anderson, who works as online retail and wholesale director at ADG, a purveyor of artwork in the grand tradition of the “golden age of travel art.”
Anderson is the son of Joel Anderson, a graduate of the Ringling School of Art & Design who established ADG, then-called Anderson Thomas Design Inc., with a partner in 1993. The firm started out in Anderson’s Nashville home studio when Nathan was just two-year-old.
In 2001, ADG created the first Spirit of Nashville™ wall calendar, with 18x24 posters of Nashville’s iconic sites and sent them to clients in New York and Los Angeles to show off the city. The art style of these images caught on in the new millennium just as well as they sold airline and railroad tickets in the post-war, mid-20th century.
Soon these vintage images with a modern twist, featuring Pancake Pantry, The Loveless Café, the Ryman Auditorium, the Bluebird Café and Cheekwood, to name just a few, could be seen in offices, retail areas, restaurants and souvenir display stands all over town.
Around 2002, the firm began making sets of images for other cities. In Nashville, over time they added schools, universities and community organizations. They began making images for specific events or to commemorate historic milestones such as the Nashville floods of 2010, the 2024 “cicada invasion” and the 2017 total solar eclipse.
To purchase one of Anderson Design Group's posters of Lipscomb University go to www.andersondesigngroupstore.com, search for "Lipscomb" and use LUxADG10 promo code to get 10% off any purchase.
But today the firm’s most popular collection of designs is the national parks poster collection, and that product line was kicked off after Nathan Anderson, now online retail and wholesale director, went on that fateful trip with his family.
Upon graduation from Lipscomb in 2013, Anderson accepted his father’s offer to formally join the business. He had been involved in the firm’s brick-and-mortar sales while growing up, but now he was tasked with creating an online store, something totally new to the firm and a task he felt he could make his own.
“He gave me full-rein to develop the retail business, so I said OK, let’s figure out how to get these posters into people’s hands,” said Anderson.
Two years later, on the cusp of proposing to his now-wife Kamalani, the Anderson family decided to take one last final road trip together. Nathan, his parents and his three siblings piled into an RV and headed to the Grand Canyon and other park sites for a 12-day trip.
During this trip, it occurred to Joel Anderson that with the 100th anniversary of the National Park System coming up in 2016, now would be a great time to offer a book featuring vintage travel posters for each of the parks. Who better than his son, who has a degree in technical writing, to write a book to pair travel tips with the illustrations.
ADG posters are all printed on-demand by the printers show here, so any design they have ever created is available on their website.
“The memories we made as a family were incredible! I can’t wait to do it with my girls,” said Anderson, now married and a father. “It’s an adventure to have to find a place to plug into each night and a picnic table to eat dinner. We included all those experiences in the introduction for the book.”
To meet such a favorable marketing timeline, Nathan sat down at a card table in his then-fiancé’s house, with her Weimaraner for company, and wrote every day to complete the book in one summer. Anderson drew from his Lipscomb courses for creative and technical writing and an internship he had with local author Jamie Blaine to write with precision, clarity and brevity.
For each national park, the book includes a short written history and a list of “things to do” along with an original illustration. ADG was able to secure a blurb for the back by famed documentary filmmaker Ken Burns.
“Using concise words, I tried to describe the park so that we value it as a part of our history,” said Anderson, who has fond memories of camping in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park with his family and of exploring Yellowstone National Park for a week with his father. “I wanted to instill an appreciation for the people who have come before us and set aside these lands for our enjoyment, to inspire the readers to protect them for the future.”
ADG published the book and it took off like a geyser in Yellowstone.
Two years later, the firm created a spiral-bound, pocket-sized version of Anderson’s book called the “Adventure Guide.” It includes a spot to place an ADG-designed sticker and to get a stamp from a park ranger to record the reader’s visit to each park.
“Our customers love having something tangible that they can hold onto to keep those memories. We update it every year, because now there are 63 parks,” said Anderson, who has been to 20 of those parks. “It always makes us a little nervous when Congress passes a new budget because if they make a new park, we start getting calls from people asking ‘Hey, do you have new artwork?’”
After the adventure guide, the design group created a wide range of national park products such as emblem stickers, calendars, puzzles, board games and a daily factoid calendar as well as posters. They published an additional illustrated book just about the Great Smoky Mountains park, for which Anderson wrote an introduction. The most recent line of national parks products highlights the “legends” of the parks. Think Big Foot and the lesser-known reclusive creatures: the Swamp Ape, Lizard Man, Cave Sloth and even Bigfoot Jr., among others.
In the 1990s, Anderson Design Group began creating Spirit of Nashville™ vintage-style artwork of Nashville's iconic locales. The design menu grew to include cities and countries all over the world, community organizations and even outer space.
Anderson is still involved with the entire seven-person ADG team to pitch ideas and develop content for these various products, and for 2025 he is working on writing a children’s guide to the national parks.
In the past few months ADG published Wilderness & Wonder: An illustrated Guide to the National Parks, a book more suited for all ages and with a behind-the-scenes feel. ADG’s national park designs can be found for sale in park gift shops on magnets, keychains, coasters and more, as well as the books and wall art.
Every year, the Andersons donate a portion of their profits to the National Park System.
“It’s amazing we have created such a following. It’s great to see people taking home a piece of our company and using it to capture a memory and be able to reflect and talk about it with others,” said Anderson. “That’s what we are doing. We are creating memories.”
Anderson Design Group's national parks product line, and all their many other art projects, are available at www.andersondesigngroupstore.com.
Photos by Kristi Jones and provided by ADG.