All I needed was a good URL name.

That’s how Oakie’s got started. I had just recently been speaking with a friend of mine about opening a shop on Threadless.com, and I had just finished the first design I’ve been truly proud of in years - Utah Brownie - when I realized it’d go great on a shirt. Without hesitation I started setting up the shop, with plans to have it be just a nice little personal side-gig to make some extra cash. But when I got to the point of needing a Shop Name, I was dumbfounded:

PaydnA art? There’s no ring. Zeichnen? No, that’s eventually going to be a collaborative project. Oquirrh Shop? Too hard to remember… And that’s when it all came together.

Oquirrh, the same name of one of my most sentimental mountain ranges, was a user name I used for a few different online outdoors forums. Quickly to be mocked or questioned, I eventually switched to Oak, then earned the nickname “Oakie”. I just so happened to have a chat window open while pondering the Shop Name riddle, and it just fell in my lap: “Oakie’s!”

My inner Designer drive was lit anew at the prospect of working on a new set of branding, and so I set to it right away, working on logo styles and brush strokes.

Oakie’s was an entirely natural progression of inspiration and excitement, after years of doubt and struggle. I didn’t know what I wanted, I was rarely inclined to draw - or especially design - anything that I would want to share with the world. But as I imported the scans into Illustrator and began working on logo styles, dabbling with colors and mix-matching assets of different strokes, I realized that this could be something really exciting.

Color ways and branding came just and fluidly, taking inspiration from the landscapes I have come to love and treat as my only escape from the monotony of the daily grind. The pointed peaks of the Wasatch, cool air and isolation in the Uintas, endless expanses of western ranges in the Manti and La Sal, Fish Lake, Canyonlands… These are all places I’ve come to adore, and it was necessary to maintain their aesthetic through Oakie’s brand standard.

I don’t know where Oakie’s is going to go or if it’s going to pay off at all in the end, but I know that it feels great to finally have an artistic flair again after nearly a half decade of feeling lost. Check out the shop for yourself at oakies.threadless.com, and keep an eye on this site or my instagram page for more updates coming soon.