For the last 10 years, the Flathead Beacon’s Glacier National Park Posters have graced the walls of homes, doctor’s offices, restaurants and everything in between across the Flathead Valley. In fact, if you’re reading this in the print edition of Glacier Journal, there’s 100% certainty you’ve seen one of the iconic Beacon poster designs — just turn to the front cover.
Former Art Director Steve Larson introduced the idea for the posters in 2016 and Beacon designers have been flexing their creative chops ever since, said Dwayne Harris, the Beacon’s current Art Director who has had a part in designing the posters since the project’s inception.
“He’s the one that came up with the idea of all of us artists doing our own posters, then doing variant covers of Glacier Journal using those posters,” Harris said. “I think it did really well and kind of took off. It’s been pretty popular. I mean, I see them all over the valley.”
From a picturesque sunset framing the Desmet on Lake McDonald, to peaceful green hues painting the Trail of the Cedars, to a Red Jammer taking its rightful place on a park road, the Beacon’s posters over the last decade have captured some of the park’s most beloved fixtures in an assortment of unique color palettes and designs.
“It’s definitely the most creative thing I get to do here, and my favorite thing too,” Harris said.
The Marketing Director Pierce Ware didn’t hesitate to agree with sentiment, saying the posters give the designers an opportunity to have complete artistic freedom.
“It’s all our idea from the start to finish,” Ware said. “When we’re laying out [reporters’] stories, we get to do some fun stuff with it. I still love layout design, but this, we’re our own boss. We don’t really get any direction at all.”
The two designers rarely even consult each other for design advice, opting to wait until they’ve each completed that year’s poster to do a big reveal.
“We don’t look at each other’s until the end because we don’t want to have any influence back and forth,” Harris said. “But surprisingly, for the last how many years, I feel like we haven’t had anywhere near the same color palettes.”
With the freedom to design the posters however they see fit, both Harris and Ware said they pull from personal experiences and memories as inspiration for each year’s poster.
“The first part of it for me is just finding the location because we’ve done so many of them now,” Harris said. “It’s just trying to come up with something we haven’t done yet; part of the park that’s new. I like to only use locations I’ve actually been to just because I think it makes it feel more genuine.”
This creative freedom has also allowed Harris and Ware to add their own signature touches to each poster — a calling card of sorts.
“He does birds; I always do bears,” Harris said. “I have bears on every one of them except maybe one.
“I remember a time I thought [the poster] was done, and somebody was like, where’s the bear? So I went and I put a little bear crossing the road and kind of looking toward the viewer.”
Ware’s most personal poster still remains his favorite to this day, he said. In the poster, a wooded clearing highlights the iconic Polebridge Mercantile building, with Ware’s beloved husky Draco and an ode to his late grandfather completing the scene.
“I had Draco in the back of my grandfather’s old truck,” Ware said. “My grandpa passed away that year, so I got his truck in there.”
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It’s adding these small details and tinkering with the poster, even after 40 hours dedicated to the design, that is both Harris and Ware’s favorite part of the process.
“When I’m down to the details, just putting the highlights in and all the stuff that really makes it all pop,” Harris said. “I’m very much freehand at that time, because I have it on my iPad, and I have my Apple pencil, and I’m actually doing real drawing, as opposed to more design. That’s what I love, and I think that’s when it really just kind of comes together.”
How do Harris and Ware know when the tinkering is finally complete?
“When it gets shipped,” Ware said with a laugh.
By the time Glacier Journal hits the stands in May, Harris and Ware are gearing up to enjoy another summer at Glacier National Park — ready to make more memories that one day may end up on your dentist office’s waiting room wall.
Glacier Journal is now available on newsstands across the Flathead Valley. Pick up a copy, or read it here. To purchase a Glacier National Park print, visit glaciernationalparkprints.com.