This is exciting- My very first BLOG!
I’m Don Smith, the “senior graphic designer” at Small Planet Foods and I’ve been invited to share a bit about the history of Cascadian Farm and life in our office here in the Skagit Valley, Washington, “then and now”.
I came to the “Magic Skagit” valley in the summer of 1974 from Seattle to work on a USFS fire crew to pay my way through the University of Washington School of Art (back when a person could still actually work their way through school). After graduation and two years of travel in Europe I returned to the Valley and settled into an old abandoned store near Rockport where I paid $5/month rent and lived as an artist, sign painter and T-shirt screen printer. I met Gene Kahn, the founder of Cascadian Farm, and often visited the Farm for saunas at the Hill House and to hang out with friends. One day in 1978 Gene came to my studio and asked me to make a painting for his first full color jam label. I knew nothing about graphic design, but that first project launched what was to become my career for the next 30 years. I stretched a piece of army tent canvas and painted a scene showing blueberries, raspberries, strawberries and blackberries bordering a potato field with white snowcapped mountains in the distance. The mountains didn’t represent any particular peaks, but were inspired by Mt. El Dorado, a 9000 foot peak in the North Cascades range visible from the Farm.
I handed Gene the canvas with a pencil sketch and said “The printer can put Cascadian Farm across the sky and put the flavor there over the dirt road at the bottom”. Following that first job, I did several more paintings and labels for Gene- pickles, juice, etc. I’d sketch out designs at his desk while he was on the phone running his fledgling business. I didn’t pay much attention but as I sketched labels I probably heard some early “sketches” for the organic food industry!
Fast forward to 1989, when Gene asked me to create an art department and be his art director to handle Cascadian Farm’s expanding frozen fruit and veggie packaging needs. With a one year-old son and T-shirt and design business I could only work part time. So he hired Ahna Alexander -a talented local graphic artist as his first Art Director. Ahna hired me in 1990 as an illustrator and production artist. At the same time she hired Joan Clinkston as her assistant, and both Joan and I still comprise the Art Department, 20 years later. Through many changes in the organic foods industry and Small Planet Foods I’m still doing pretty much what I began doing for Cascadian Farm over 30 years ago- feeling very fortunate to live in this beautiful river valley, earning a living as an artist for one of the country’s leading organic food companies!
In my next dispatch I’ll write about life at our office here in Sedro-Woolley.
-Don
Want more Certified Organic, Guaranteed Delicious™ stories from Cascadian Farm? You can get a $1 off coupon when you sign up for our email newsletter. You can also subscribe to our RSS feed for fresh stories almost every day!
