Outdoor Recreation Archive Releases Book and Hosts International Exhibits

The Outdoor Recreation Archive (ORA) is having a moment. From a show during Paris Fashion Week to a new book detailing the history of 70 iconic brands to a series of exhibits as far abroad as Tokyo, the archive is drawing international attention to Utah State University and the Outdoor Product Design and Development (OPDD) program.

It’s also grown to more than 10,000 catalogues and magazines as well as documents, sketches, correspondence, and other artifacts of USU’s outdoor product history since the program’s founding in 2018.

Clint Pumphrey, manuscript curator for USU Special Collections and Archives, and Chase Anderson, OPDD’s industry relations manager, both credit the boom in the ORA’s visibility to the archive’s Instagram account.

“We have well over 40,000 followers,” said Anderson. “It’s the third biggest USU Instagram account. The audience is really broad. Our top five cities are Tokyo, London, Paris, New York, and Los Angeles, and the people finding this material are not just outdoor enthusiasts, but designers in and out of the industry.”

It was this social media account, explained Pumphrey, that made the archive’s book possible.

“A publisher in the United Kingdom, Thames and Hudson, had seen that account and contacted me about creating a book around the archive,” he said. “We had some initial conversations about what that might look like, what kinds of materials would be in it, how it would be organized, and it only made sense to bring in Chase as well since he’s my partner in making this archive a reality. And so, the two of us together worked with the publisher to create the book.”

The result was The Outdoor Archive: The Ultimate Collection of Adventure & Sporting Graphics, Illustrations and Gear, which debuted on May 13 in the United States and will debut internationally in June. Organized by medium, the book features more than 600 images from the ORA that range from product and landscape photography to collage, illustration, and typography.

In addition to the lead-in text for the images, the book also includes personal reflections from more than twenty athletes, creative directors, designers, academics, and more. Names include Kimou Myer, a creative director at Nike with his own design firm; Avery Trufelman, a podcaster behind the show Articles of Interest; Thibo Dennis, a footwear designer who’s worked for Dior and Louis Vuitton; Conrad Anker, an internationally recognized alpinist who located George Mallory’s body on Mount Everest after he disappeared in 1924; outdoor photographer Chris Burkard, who also wrote the book’s foreword; and USU’s own Julie Lamarra, associate professor in the OPDD.

To promote the book, Anderson and Pumphrey are hosting or attending a range of book events and interviews. These include a visit to Nike’s Blue Ribbon Studio in Oregon back in April, an exhibition in Tokyo in May, an outdoor industry conference in Nashville, Tennessee, called Switchback in June, and more to come.

The release of the book isn’t the first big event for the ORA in 2025. In March, the archive collaborated with French outdoor magazine Useless Fighters and the outdoor product company The North Face to create Genesis, an exhibit on the history and evolution of The North Face and its broader impact on fashion. The ORA contributed images from throughout the company’s history, including photos from designers’ sketchbooks and even the first catalog produced by The North Face in 1966.

As with the ORA’s new book, Genesis was the result of the archive’s exposure on Instagram. Canadian artist and graphic designer Geoff McFetridge discovered the ORA account and decided to stop by the archive on a road trip along with Ramdane Touhami, the French-Moroccan artist and entrepreneur behind Useless Fighters as well as Words, Sounds, Colors, and Shapes, the gallery where Genesis ultimately took place. Touhami was impressed by what he saw at the ORA, and before long, Pumphrey and Anderson were on their way to France.

“When you’re at customs and they ask you why you’re there, you don’t usually get to answer ‘Fashion Week,’” said Anderson. “It’s been fun for us, and because these are all university projects, it’s also been great to see people discover Utah State. We’re helping Utah State to become internationally renowned for outdoor product design and development in general and as a leader in archiving this topic in particular.”

The ORA draws visitors so regularly that the board where Anderson and Pumphrey hang polaroids of out-of-town guests has run out of space and needs to be replaced. That’s because, for people looking to understand the industry’s past, there’s no alternative to USU.

“One of the reasons the archive has taken off the way it has is because it’s the only collection of its kind in the world,” said Pumphrey. “While there’s a lot of imagery on the internet, it can be a bit of an echo chamber since so much of what exists was never put online. We get a lot of people who want to incorporate vintage designs into their work and come here to explore things that people haven’t laid eyes on in decades — even 60 or more years.”

Understanding what made a company special in the past and reinjecting that DNA into new products is one reason that companies like The North Face send designers to the ORA, said Anderson. But, added Pumphrey, it’s also sometimes about maintaining tradition.

“Many of these companies are focused on innovation and sustainability,” he said. “But I think what they’re realizing is that rediscovering the past can also help to build a brand. We’ve worked with folks who really leaned into the idea of using heritage to build trust with consumers and establish that they have a long history of innovation.”

The ORA has also been an asset to USU students.

“Just yesterday we had a class of students in our Fundamentals of Design course come in here,” Anderson said. “It’s helpful for them to see examples of what they learn in class, so we curated a selection of materials for them to examine for good principles of design throughout history. In another class, students who are learning to design and visualize their ideas on paper come here to study sketchbooks from iconic designers in the outdoor industry. We also have examples of companies and products that have disappeared, and there’s something to be learned from them as well. Maybe those ideas didn’t work at the time, but maybe there’s an opportunity for students to use them today.”

The Outdoor Archive: The Ultimate Collection of Adventure & Sporting Graphics, Illustrations and Gear is available from Thames & Hudson and can also be found on Amazon and Bookshop.org.