Graphic Design: Signage at GSENM
Wayside signage proofs at the BLM Escalante Field Office.
August 2024.
Maybe I was in over my head when I applied for a graphic design internship after just finishing my first graphic design class in my last semester of college. But either way I got the job.
I started my first work-from-home graphic design position about a month after graduating from Southern Utah University. Through a program at SUU called the Intergovernmental Internship Cooperative (IIC), I was hired as a graphic design intern for the Bureau of Land Management at Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. I was delighted to learn while meeting with my would-be mentor that I had enough design experience for the highest intern wage. At that moment I knew I had do my best and maybe prove myself.
My task for the summer would be to redesign ten wayside panels across the 1.9 million acre monument to update information and to match the BLM’s new design standards. It seemed like an easy task until you are the one building these signs from a blank InDesign file. There are so many options and a lot of information. What started as moving text around in a file turned into searching for images and adjusting them in photoshop, designing icons from scratch, re-reading the history of the monument, and researching how to do one thing or another in the Adobe Suite.
About halfway through my internship I got to visit the monument with my mentor, Allysia, who worked on site. Being able to put everything into context gave me more confidence in my work, and I became passionate about this beautiful area. My trip included chatting with Allysia about everything in life in her ranger truck on the monument, eating radishes from her garden, and watching the landscape change from rugged red rock to cottonwood lined streams to lunar-like landscapes with alien formations. Allysia knew the land like the back of her hand, having lived and worked on the monument for the past twenty years. Originally from Tennessee, she told stories of park hopping in her early years and the decision to do landscape architecture at USU. She wore a black sleeveless top, linen pants, and chaco slides as we crossed the monument and she looked both in and out of place when we took a little hike every hour or two. To this day she is one of my role models.
When I got back to designing, Allysia asked if I had ever drawn maps before. I hadn’t, but this was very ironic because my father has been a draftsman since highschool. I asked him for some advice but ultimately did a lot of experimenting with Google Maps and Adobe Illustrator. Allysia had me recreate a map for each sign (which was actually its own sign) which meant I was really doing twenty signs. Now with the hang of the Adobe Suite, I was flying through layouts and spending more time on content. As I knocked out sign after sign, Allysia had me start doing additional recreation signs for a handful of sites, including another map at Calf Creek Falls.
My time came to a close in October of the same year, making me a full-time graphic designer for only four months. I learned so much during that time and can think of no better way to solidify my basic digital tools class then by forty hours a week in Adobe. Better yet, I got to experience one of Utah’s (biggest) gems in a deep and meaningful way, even from afar.
Unfortunately, with the new administration in 2025, my beloved mentor was “asked” to take an early retirement or find work elsewhere and the progress of my signage work came to a grinding halt. Before she left, however, she told me they had been sent to print and in the fabrication process. Only the map at Calf Creek Falls had been installed at that point. I was disappointed that it was possible that my signs may never be installed and that, even if fabricated, they would waste away in the Escalante field office with a staff of only three or four. So much of not only my time but my passion went into those signs and they were in the last step of their journey.
About a year later she texted me that at least two locations on the monument now had the signs installed. I have already planned to take a drive out to Escalante sometime soon to catch a glimpse.
