Feature Friday #021 — Fell

A married design team? Could it actually work? Meet Jorrien and Tiera Peterson, the awesome husband-wife team behind Fell. Turns out, it works *and* you can still homeschool your kids while spending 3 months abroad in Switzerland. Check out their favorite US parks, work process, and more below. And don't forget to browse their full CB collection when you're finished. 

Let's save the process questions for later and get right to the good stuff… After years of featuring your designs on CB I'm dying to finally ask, what are your top National Parks? Anything beat the Mighty 5 of your home region?

Every new Fell drop sends us down a rabbit hole of AllTrails reviews so I gotta know if your designs are based on your favorites or if you're an equal opportunist when it comes to the NPS.

Oh that's a tough one! Yes, we are definitely partial to the mighty five. I grew up hiking in Arches and Zion in particular, and it feels so fulfilling for my own kids to make core memories there as well. But we also love parks outside of Utah. There's something special about getting out and seeing places that aren't your standard home scenery, you know?

So we also love to visit Glacier. We did a study abroad to learn more about Swiss design, and another time we even ended up selling our furniture and staying in Switzerland for 3 months, with a couple of kids in tow. Needless to say, we love Switzerland, and Glacier is the closest thing to the Swiss Alps that I've ever seen. But we don't just love it for what it reminds us of, we also love it because of what it is. The crown of the continent. Glacier is stunning, full of unique geology, wildlife, and an engineering marvel. Driving the going-to-the-sun road is an incredible experience.

Now if we had to narrow it down, other parks we love are Joshua Tree, Saguaro, Grand Canyon, Virgin Islands, Grand Teton, and Craters of the Moon National Monument. That last one might be our kids' current favorite. In short, we love going to parks where the environment is drastically different from what we're used to, these places jolt us from everyday routine and give us an extra shot of creative inspiration.

When working with public lands clients, or designing product for our own shop, we work just as hard to make a great design whether it's one of our favorite parks or not. But I will add that our best work definitely happens when we are able to actually visit that park in person. Something special happens when you are there exploring with a sketchbook, not just Googling different images to try to piece together a design.

Ahh Glacier is my number one park to get to at the moment. That sounds absolutely incredible. But I need to know more about the selling-everything-and-moving-to-Switzerland episode. What factors, both work and family related, went into that decision? I'm sure you learned a lot from the experience but was it a worthwhile adventure? I mean, Swiss Alps… that's incredible!

Oh good! You won't be disappointed by Glacier. It's incredible.

So to put it simply, going to Switzerland was absolutely worth it. We still think of our lives in terms of "before Switzerland" and "after Switzerland." During college, we both ended up going on a design study abroad in Switzerland (at different times), so it's always been a special place for us. Then a few years back when we were living in Salt Lake, we knew we wanted to move somewhere a little more rural, but we weren't sure where yet. Then this crazy idea came to us and we ran with it. We decided to sell off our furniture, put everything else into storage, and go back to Switzerland for as long as we could without a visa, and try to figure out our next move from there, while working on a children's book we just got a deal to make. It was an incredible three months, and we wish it could have been longer. Being immersed in Swiss design and Swiss nature for so long was life changing.

Being self-employed, we really could work from anywhere. We landed on a small town on the shore of Lake Geneva. We still had to work, it wasn't just a 3 month vacation, but we did some of our best design work there. Whether on our flat's balcony overlooking the lake, or on a train headed into the mountains. Thank heavens for laptops!

Some of the best advice we were ever given when we were about to have our first baby was to not let kids get in the way of our passions. If you love to travel, don't let kids stop you from traveling. Bring the kids with you. Yes, traveling with kids is different, and harder, and slower haha. But we've found it to be more than worth it. And now that our kids are school age, we can still travel with them because we chose to homeschool. And an added bonus of homeschool is that we are in charge of their education. I don't know any other kindergarteners that have a design thinking class haha.

Anyway, we came back to Utah and ended up in a small mountain community in Heber Valley. We hope to take more 3 month long international adventures as a family in the future.

A kindergarten design thinking class is definitely new to me! But that's the beauty of homeschooling. Getting outside the traditional education system can have such a positive influence on perspective and critical thinking.

Assuming there's a new 3 month adventure coming, will it be design-focused or more concentrated on learning and exploring a new culture?

Now you've done it, you got us started on travel again. Get ready for a 'longer than you want to read' response! I don't know if we will be able to do another 3 month adventure in the next couple of years, but we do fantasize about it all the time. Design is and always will be a focus on any trip we take, but you don't have to go to a design mecca like Switzerland in order to glean some important lessons about design. Culture (and food!) is just as important to us, especially as we are raising children. We want our kids to grow up with an appreciation and understanding for different points of view and different ways of thinking.

Anticipation of the adventure is almost as good as the trip itself sometimes. We talk about it a lot and have maybe narrowed it down to a few options. Our front runner is Scandinavia. We mostly want to spend time in a cabin on a lake in the Swedish woods, but would probably bounce around different regions in each country in the region. We absolutely love the focus on minimalism and nature that embodies Scandinavian design. And although Scandinavian design can be a generalized term for all of the Nordic region, it is fun to analyze how each Nordic country's culture and terrain has affected the great Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, and Finnish designers. And on top of that our ancestry comes from there. We both actually have Danish and Swedish blood.

We are also really interested in Mexico. Jorrien spent two years living in the Yucatán as a missionary, and we've always wanted to take our kids there. The Yucatán has a really unique mixture of extraordinary natural beauty, incredible ancient design from the Maya, and a resurgence of modern designers inspired by their roots and surroundings.

Next up is Singapore. We've only spent a few days there, and we're dying to go back for longer. We've never seen a place with nature and design so integrated into their culture and cities. It was absolutely incredible. Some people say that they are "urban rewilding" and the ways they have intertwined green spaces and design are so innovative and vibrant.

Oh, and there's a Fell children's book out there somewhere?!? How did I not know about this? What other projects are you involved with that we should know about?

Yes, we have a couple of children's books out there! They are nature based seek and find books. The first one is all about biomes. It has simple, iconic styled illustrations, with short facts about biomes and adaptations within each biome. The second one features 9 national parks. These aren't meant to be comprehensive studies on the subject, but just a fun activity for kids, hoping to instill a few facts along the way.

As of now, we are primarily focused on designing new merchandise for national parks. We partner with the non-profit entities associated with the parks, creating designs for them to sell in their book stores to help raise money to support the parks.

A few of the parks we are currently partnered with are Zion, Arches, Canyonlands, Grand Canyon, Grand Teton, Joshua Tree, Shenandoah, Denali, Saguaro, Carlsbad Caverns, Hawai'i Volcanoes, and Craters of the Moon. Another recent job that we are pretty excited about is working with the Oliver Patch Project. They "empower kids battling cancer with the power of patches." We donated some exclusive patch designs to them, and now they are available for kids to choose from, along with an assortment of patches from other artists. They are a pretty amazing organization.

Zion is my favorite (much better than Bryce IMO 😉). And also… Scandinavia! Take me with you! As the very proud owner of a well-traveled Volvo, I can confirm that the Swedes are onto something.

More importantly, the Oliver Patch Project looks outstanding. This is the first I've heard of it. It's clearly a great cause and certainly uplifting for the kids.

So here's the big question: You travel together, work together, and leisure together. A lot. Are you sick of each other yet? That's a joke (mostly). But seriously, what's it like working together all the time? Do you have a method for making business decisions, settling creative differences, or just carving out some good ole alone time?

Good choice getting a Volvo haha. Yeah, let's go to Scandinavia! Anyone else in?

Oh goodness, that really is a good question. In short, no, we are not sick of each other. We are best friends, and are thrilled to be together as often as we can. But as parents and business owners, we have to tag team our responsibilities. Jorrien often works in the morning, and Tiera takes care of the kids and teaches homeschool. Then we switch and Tiera works while Jorrien tries to keep the kids alive and teaches Art, Design, and Spanish homeschool classes. So in all reality, we don't get to spend that much time together during the day (or night for that matter, if you have toddlers, then you know).

One thing we do to get some time alone is go backpacking. About once a year, we set off without kids, armed with a tent and a sketchbook. We get out into the mountains, making sure to escape cell service range, and we can just talk and ideate. This is one of the best things we can do for our business and our relationship. We love to camp with our kids often, but those trips are busy keeping kids out of fast rivers and from falling off of cliffs! One of the secrets we've found to creative success is that you can't force good ideas to come, you just have to make room for them to visit you. For us, that means finding quiet, prayerful moments away from the business of life and technology to find inspiration for the problems we face at home and at work.

Some couples clash a lot when they work and live together, but we really get along great. In fact, I think the two biggest arguments in our entire marriage have been pretty frivolous. We clashed on sticker colors and queso. There was this one saguaro themed badge in particular that Jorrien designed and colored, and Tiera was not impressed. So she hopped on the computer and recolored it. We argued about which colorway to use, and couldn't come to an agreement, so we settled our differences by putting it out as a poll on instagram haha. The people chose, and Tiera won. Also, for years we disagreed about the "correct" consistency of proper queso. It took us longer than we'd like to admit to figure out that we were both familiar with completely different kinds haha. Jorrien lived in Mexico for a few years, where queso is thick and stringy. Tiera grew up in Texas, where queso is runny. Now we both love both types. Suffice it to say that we get along pretty well if our biggest disagreements are on such frivolous things.

Clashing on queso? That's wild. In my experience queso only brings unity… as long as it's runny.

“You can't force good ideas to come, you just have to make room for them to visit you" might be my favorite interview quote of the year. It's spot on. And I can't think of a better way for that to happen than by resting and recharging with a backpacking excursion. Speaking of, I might be reaching out again when we plan the CB Grand Canyon overnighter ;)

When you started the business, did you anticipate being where you're at right now? I'm fascinated to know how you've grown or picked up the slack for each other when results didn't meet expectations. Has it all gone according to plan or have your original roles morphed over the years?

When we first started out, we had a pretty clear vision of where and what we wanted to be, and while some of that has come to fruition, we have had to pivot over the years. Over time we've had to change our expectations of what we do as a business.

One example is that we started out by only screen printing product, and no outsourcing either, we did it all from start to finish. We deliberated for hours about evolving, specifically about switching to digital prints, adding stickers, and outsourcing some tee shirt designs to this awesome shirt printer, Cotton Bureau. Ultimately we decided to move forward on all that, which opened up our bandwidth for more design, which was a big part of our current success. Not to mention that outsourcing product meant we could hire someone else to do a better job than we could on our own, and for cheaper too. It really was a win-win.

Tiera runs this business, and Jorrien makes the art, but we definitely cross over when necessary. But it's hard to work together and make decisions, being equal partners, when we can't find the time of day to both be available to work at the same time. With young kids, one of us has to always be available to them. We are very against TV being the babysitter (except for that one time when we both got the flu at the same time!). So one of the best decisions we ever made was to hire a "mommy's helper." We get a local girl to come babysit while we go in our in-house studio, close the door, and talk through some high level decisions. We also hired a fulfillment assistant who can count and package all of our orders, saving hours of precious time. We only have so much time available to work, and every minute counts. Ultimately, our main purpose in being self employed is so that we can make our family the priority. But we still have to work enough to make a living, so it's a tricky balance. That's why these two employees have been instrumental.

It has not all gone according to plan! We have failed so many times, in small and big ways. One of our biggest failures was opening up a brick and mortar storefront. Thank heavens it wasn't a success though, because after the initial excitement of opening up the storefront we had dreamed of for years, we realized that we actually didn't like running a shop at all. We definitely value freedom and flexibility more than being tied down to a storefront. Overall, our roles haven't changed much. Jorrien still focuses on design, Tiera keeps the business running, and we make all high level decisions together.

So no, it has not all gone as planned, but it's turned out better than we imagined.
Oh gosh that is sooo much work to print and fulfill your own products. We, uh, are quite familiar. And obviously we're thrilled that you outsourced some of the load! For us, it's leaving the design work to talented folks like you that makes life a lot easier. 

It sounds like the business is in a fantastic spot. But, as you described, changes are inevitable. Do you anticipate one of those changes being AI? There's so much capability out there now from content to customer service to even, gulp, "art." Is Fell going to be at the forefront of the AI era or does it feel inauthentic to you?

AI is incredible. The things it can do astounds us. In a lot of ways, the world is a better place because of AI. But for the art world, it really does feel inauthentic to us. There's something special about appreciating and enjoying the thought and effort that a human being puts into their craft. Quite frankly, we are afraid of losing jobs and having to figure out a different way to supplement our income as AI can be more economically persuasive to clients. But like we already talked about, sooner or later you have to pivot and problem solve anyway. But for us, we don't plan to use AI for anything art related.

There's definitely value in the experimenting with and learning from new methods and technology. It would be a bit boring if you never had to adapt or pivot, no? But ultimately we agree with you. The specialness of the human creation can't be replicated.

Thanks so much for chatting with us! You guys make an incredible team and we can't wait to see your next project. Cya in the Alps!