Fell: Combining the Outdoors with Design

By combining their passions for design and the outdoors, Tiera and Jorrien Peterson created Fell in 2016. Now a local design and retail business, Fell has grown to provide their customers with a wide range of pins, postcards, suncatchers, screenprints, art prints, hats and patches that represent outdoor experiences. They wanted to “remind [people] of past adventures or inspire [them] to explore in the future,” Jorrien says.

Tiera and Jorrien met as neighbors and both attended Utah State University. Tiera was part of the business program, and Jorrien studied design. After falling in love during their studies, their first business decision was to purchase a screen printing press to design and print their wedding invitations. This led to them offering design-printing services to their friends with the ultimate goal of branching out nationwide and running their business from home, sharing all the duties of a growing home. It worked. “We want to produce great designs that are accessible for everybody,” Tiera says.

The Petersons are constant worldwide travelers with a desire to always be outside. They acquire small parcels in these travels to elicit their own reminiscences and carry the stories of their experiences. Parcels include stickers, patches, pins and more. They noticed a lack of these types of products in Utah and decided to put their design talent and business acumen to work and custom design simple, clean products that would help others carry stories, specifically those rooted in any outdoor space. For example, Jorrien says of an illustrated print of Zion National Park they designed, “We want that to remind [our customers] of the adventures they’ve had in Zion.”

“We want to produce great designs that are accessible for everybody.”

The aesthetic allure of Fell products owes itself to a simplicity that speaks. Bold and bright colors with crisp lines give the viewer a clear story of things both broad and personal, from clean drawings of animals in the wild to a chart of the solar system to a map of the United States. The last of these led them to winning recognition in the 2020 AIGA 100 Show, as it showed outdoor travel locations throughout the country depicted in clean black lines representing mountains, lakes and trees.

Tiera and Jorrien both want to give back to communities and the outdoors. “It’s what makes our company special to us,” Jorrien says.  A telling example of this desire came at the start of the pandemic, when they were using the website for Yellowstone National Park to educate themselves on a new design of their own. The Petersons noticed that the Yellowstone website told them it was open 24 hours. They thought that this is how the outdoors should be understood during these times and designed a sticker stating “open 24 hours” in neon print. Included in the first month of sales, everyone that bought a sticker received a matching donation to the US Forest Service from Fell that would plant a tree.

Their desire to give back to the community has been apparent in diverse ways. They donate prints to Cake4Kids, an organization that provides birthday cakes to foster children; they provided shirts, prints and other products to PTAs who are able to auction the items for a profit and are generally given a high discount, or even given the items for free. “Because of [our] small donation, there’s a bigger impact on the school or the organization,” Jorrien says.

Overall, there is a feeling that the impact Fell can have on a community is as important as their own sustainment and growth as a company. Fell products can be found online at madebyfell.com or Instagram @madebywell, as well as in local establishments such as: Salt & Honey Market in Salt Lake City, The Store in The Gateway District, The Natural History Museum of Utah, The Leonardo Museum in Salt Lake City, or their Midway shop at 380 E. Main St., Ste. E.