Grant Stephenson
Project Overview
Whitetail Pursuit is a poster series that explores the connection between art and ethics in deer hunting. Nine of the twelve poster designs are inspired by the historical aesthetics of Victorian, Bauhaus, and Vintage Propaganda art styles. These posters honor the cultural, ecological, and personal dimensions of responsibly hunting white-tailed deer.
Accompanying this is a personal mini-series dedicated to my dad, in my signature GRANT STYLE. This series tells the story of my first successful bow-buck harvest and dedication. Together, these series aim to reframe deer hunting as a mindful act of environmental stewardship.
The Whitetail Pursuit poster series utilizes three historical art styles—Victorian, Bauhaus, and Vintage Propaganda—to highlight cultural traditions, ecological benefits, and personal experiences of hunting white-tailed deer.
By reimagining iconic art styles, the Whitetail Pursuit brings a fresh perspective to eliminating the stigma surrounding deer hunting. The main series includes three posters in each historical style, designed to spark reflection on the positive aspects of deer hunting when it’s carried out ethically for sustenance.
Complementing this historical set is a mini-series featuring the GRANT STYLE, which depicts the same theme but shares a story of my first bow buck harvest from the 2023 deer season.
With these two complementary poster series featuring diverse design aesthetics, The Whitetail Pursuit aims to spotlight deer hunting as an act of stewardship.
Thesis Statement
Victorian Era Style
Then He Prayed
This Victorian-style illustration depicts a hunter praying along a riverside before his hunt. It captures a quiet moment of gratitude for God's creation. Thank you, Lord.
The Health Bolstering Tree Stand
This poster puts a fun spin on an old electric health chair invention from the Victorian Era. Based on this idea, I have invented The Health Bolstering Tree Stand. It's presented with a detailed drawing and sales pitch that fits the Victorian Era style.
Instead of shocking your muscles to improve health, this ad describes how sitting quietly in nature from a tree stand improves your health. This poster uses a lot of exaggerated words to the point where it's humorous, but these are things that a simple tree stand truly has to offer.
NO SIR! NO SIR!
This poster emulates seeing an advertisement during the Victorian Era (1850s). This poster provides more context to the 'Why' of deer hunting. If not for hunters, you'd see deer almost everywhere you go due to the lack of natural predators. More deer leads to more car accidents and unhealthy populations of deer. It’s central message is to pass down the hunting tradition to future generations so that we don't lose touch with nature and sustainable life skills.
Vintage Propaganda Style
Ohio Deer Hunting Stats 2022-23
This poster's main objective is to showcase my ability to design infographics for Ohio's 2022-2023 season. The background is vintage, while the stats remain clean and precise.
Fill The Freezers — Feed The Hungry
Fill The Freezers — Feed The Hungry is a vintage war effort-style poster that shows an open freezer filled with hunter-donated venison to help feed hungry families. The messaging on the freezer celebrates hunters for supporting food banks and organizations like Hunters for the Hungry that facilitate meat donations all across America. In a patriotic call to action, the poster declares, "Fill the Freezers - Feed the Hungry," reminding hunters that stepping up to fill freezers makes a big difference. The retro graphics convey a message of appreciation and encouragement for hunters to keep donating their venison. It's a poster that highlights hunters helping the community.
Girls Hunt Too!
The “Girls Hunt Too!” puts a new spin on the iconic "We Can Do It!" WWII image. The strong female proclaims today's message - Girls Hunt Too! Detailed in the same 1940s propagandist style, the artwork features a girl hunter sporting camo while flexing like Rosie the Riveter. It's a nod to women's participation in hunting and the wartime posters that first depicted women's strength.
Bauhaus Style
Hunters Fund Conservation Efforts
Hunters Fund Conservation Effots is an informational poster that uses minimalist design principles of the Bauhaus movement to convey how deer hunting supports wildlife preservation. Clean lines of dark gray and hunter-orange separate data on the contributions of license fees and tags paid by sportsmen. These payments support local and national habitat and conservation programs.
Compound Bow
Blending striking aesthetics, accuracy, and education, this poster shows the components of a compound bow for archery hunters in the historic Bauhaus Art Movement style. Crisp shapes and lines construct the essential compound bow parts into abstract geometric forms. All parts are labeled concisely, from cams, cables, and bowstring to limbs and the stabilizer.
The Ethical Shot
The Ethical Shot poster delivers an important message through its simple yet striking Bauhaus design. It educates where the kill shot is on a whitetail with a target placed on the vitals. Clean horizontal lines and circular shapes create a composition mimicking the Bauhaus design philosophy of "form following function."
Prominently featured is a diagram of a doe that showcases a deer's heart and lung placement at a broadside angle rather than just the target. This poster advocates for the responsible hunter who waits for The Ethical Shot. Which all hunters should strive for.
GRANT STYLE
CLIMBIN’ TIME
The CLIMBIN’ TIME poster captures my view once I arrive at my setup. Every morning that I hunt, I'd take a 1.5—to 2-mile trek into the dark woods, and there was no greater feeling once I'd get to my tree. The relief of getting to the base of my setup never gets old.
Every hunter has experienced fear and adrenaline kicks in the early morning hours of the woods, especially once your mind starts playing tricks on you. Coming back from an evening hunt isn't the best either unless your hunt was successful. But in the end, it's all fun. It's challenging. It's worth it. It's everything a hunter wants because it becomes part of the story.
This poster barely scratches the surface of the life lessons and self-reliance developed during those morning climbin' times.
First Bow Buck Story
This poster series is dedicated to my dad. My dad and I always spend a lot of time talking about hunting when it's in season. I constantly communicated with my dad on specific hunting setups, how hunts went, and what I saw or didn't see. In late October, I wounded a deer with a poor shot after who knows how many hunts. It was frustrating but I didn't try and get too down about it, those animals are tough as nails. After hours and hours of searching for blood, I was unable to recover the deer, and I called my dad, being pretty upset about it. I thought I missed my opportunity.
Many hunts later, I went back to the drawing board. I adjusted based on previous hunts, made my own rattling antler set from an old European mount, and hunted the upcoming prime weather conditions. Then came the morning of November 18, 2023.
I'll never forget a moment with my dad when we tracked this buck. To make it even better, my brother was there too. The quotes reflect the emotional ride of deer hunting - having self-doubt about flipping the switch and getting the job done. This is a valuable life lesson. Bow hunting whitetails is one of the most challenging things I have ever taken up, and I finally got it done. This is only the beginning.
TRACKIN’ TIME
The TRACKIN' TIME poster features a picture of the arrow that took down my first buck. I remember picking up the arrow for the first time, and when I saw how it looked, I was overwhelmed. I could barely talk or think straight, so the first thing I did was call my dad.
This poster is more than a bloody arrow. I started bow hunting in my sophomore year of high school. Since that time, I have only released an arrow at three deer. There have been about four times I was fully drawn but didn’t get any good shot opportunities. Unfortunately, I have wounded two bucks in my lifetime with my bow. One was during a late-season hunt in North Dakota, and the other was this past season before this buck. Everything happens for a reason.
After all this time, I achieved my goal of successfully harvesting my first buck with a bow. All the years of hoping for this moment, all the scouting, all of the close calls, all of the practicings, researching, and tough lessons had led to this moment, and I am grateful for it all.
Design Process
Project Plan
Moodboards
Reflection
For my thesis, I focused on finding a way to relate it to something I would thoroughly enjoy to make the project enjoyable. I wanted to dedicate it to one of my passions: deer hunting. However, I also thought deeply and realized that not many people out there create art while being avid hunters, so this was the perfect opportunity to express myself as a hunter through my creative work.
At first, I planned to create a video documentary about myself filming a solo hunt to harvest a deer ethically. Still, there needed to be a solid meaning behind this to express the importance of deer hunting and conservation. I couldn't show my creative ability in graphic design with this documentary idea, so this idea was quickly scrapped. So, I started brainstorming more ideas, and one was about what it takes to ethically harvest a white-tailed deer through a poster series. Each poster would be a critical step in hunting, from buying a license to practicing shooting my bow to scouting land, the setup, the waiting game; you get the gist. But again, I needed more. I wanted to express the importance of deer conservation and hunting responsibly. I wanted to show the dedication deer hunting takes and that it isn't just about going out in the woods looking to cause some havoc.
After doing more research, I decided to depict the importance of deer hunting using three historical art styles. From here, I was able to intricately establish each poster to give a more accurate representation of the positives of deer hunting and conservation. The project quickly took off, and I also wanted to include another poster series about the story of my first bow buck harvest. I dedicated this mini-series to my dad because he taught me many of the ins and outs of deer hunting. We constantly communicated about specific setups and stories, so it felt right to do this. His reaction to the series is something I will never forget.
Overall, this project developed my problem-solving skills and professionalism and helped me find the correct way to design meaningful work. I had to go through many brainstorming sessions and ideas to see what would best convey my thesis to my audience. I take pride in doing this in my work and plan to carry this asset with me in every project I do in my graphic design career.