Winning... NEWSLETTER / April 2026 KIND WORDS: “The best PR firms make an editor's job easier – and Amy and Anne do exactly that. Knowledgeable, professional, this duo has their finger on the pulse of the design industry.” – Darla Worden, Editor in Chief, Mountain Living 
WELL RED “After months of submissions, judging and voting, we’re proud to celebrate the projects, products and talent setting a new standard for residential design,” writes LUXE Interiors + Design following the big reveal of the magazine’s annual RED (for residential excellence in design) Awards. Indeed, projects and talent both were on hand at the April 15 awards gala in Chicago, as WRJ Design’s Rush Jenkins and Klaus Baer accepted, first, the Colorado + the Rockies regional award for interior design (for the second year in a row), and then the best-in-the-U.S. national interior design award. WRJ’s honors came for their design of an extraordinary Jackson Hole home focused around a blue-chip art collection and sublime mountain views—and soon to be featured as one of 10 new projects from WRJ in their upcoming book Natural Luxury: Homes Inspired by Nature, due out in July. 
DUAL WINS “This year’s awards honor the full spectrum of talent—from interiors and kitchens to landscapes, craftsmanship, and the enduring architectural firms whose vision has defined Western living for decades,” writes Sunset magazine of its 2026 Western Home & Design Awards. Despite Sunset noting “an increase in exceptional entries” this year, not one but two Word PR clients took top honors. JLF Architects won Best “Regionalist” Mountain House for a Park City home where “Rustic materials meet contemporary design,” writes the magazine. Equally impressive is Jacobs + Interiors interior design win as one of four “inspired slopeside standouts” so good that Sunset created a new category, “Magic Mountain,” to highlight them, with Vail designer Yvonne Jacobs praised for her Bachelor Gulch great room transformation as Best Use of Cheeky Taxidermy. 
GOT IT COVERED A dynamic Vail entryway earned the March/April cover of Colorado Homes & Lifestyles for Aspen Design House. “We love being faced with unique problems to solve – allowing us to engage our creativity,” says ADH founder Denise Taylor. Aspen Design House’s amazing transformation of the interior of the home that earned the CH&L “Lean into Green” cover story began with an unwieldy warehouse-size great room. Taylor and lead designer Gigi Podolak Knox brought their custom approach, honoring the architecture while bringing human scale to the soaring, glass-walled space. Also called out in the article? The duo’s curated art selections that brought color, depth and personality through multiple mediums. (Photo: Dallas + Harris) PR TIP OF THE MONTH Dog Models Wanted Planning a photo shoot? Corral some handy pets and people. Shelter magazines have undergone a “shift, a departure from home decor imagery from years past—the bulk of which presented a world without people,” writes online design trade magazine Business of Home in the article “Why the design industry is putting people (and pets) back in photos.” A major factor in the shift is social media. “Amateur images featuring both furniture and people have proliferated across the internet, whether brands like it or not, setting a new aesthetic default,” writes BoH. “According to the performance of social ads, digital ads and influencer content, consumers react more positively to ‘real-life people and real-life situations.’” Word PR clients experienced some aspects of this trend recently. The Aspen Design House cover story in Colorado Homes & Lifestyles mentioned above includes photos of the family’s dachshund, Pearl, as well as of the daughter interviewed for the story walking past a doorway in the back of the dining room image. And for a recent Jackson Hole photo shoot of a JLF Architects project for an upcoming issue of Sunset magazine, the photo editor requested a volunteer from the interior design team to “stand in on some shots. We typically have a person walking through the frame, for example, on some shots to add life to photos,” she explains. Of course dogs, especially, in design photos aren’t exactly new, thanks to a number of designers and celebrities who treat their pets like family. Check out this “from the archives” article, 30 Dogs Lounging in Architectural Digest, to see the pets of the likes of Marc Jacobs, Jonathan Adler and Jane Fonda at rest in some glamorous interiors. Or closer to home, look for WRJ’s Rush Jenkins and Klaus Baer’s beloved pair of Newfoundlands, Wolfie and Duchess, in a variety of media, including this Mountain Living article on the firm’s new Jackson Hole headquarters, Stags Landing. But the social media impact is real, and actually goes beyond the addition of people and pets in photos to embrace an overall less-pristine approach. As Homes & Gardens writes in their January 2026 trend-prediction piece Designers All Agree the Most Stylish Spaces of 2026 Are Far From Perfect, “There’s a growing rejection of showroom-perfect interiors in favor of spaces that feel lived-in, layered, and real. Because the most stylish homes right now aren’t chasing perfection – they’re embracing imperfection, and all the charm that comes with it.” And the trend extends to the hospitality world, too, where photos of real families enjoying vacation spaces, like those taken by “A Mom Explores” family travel writer Emily Krause, who recently stayed at our client Antlers at Vail hotel with her two youngest, capturing the kid-friendly spaces as only real children enjoying an experience can in Krause’s Ultimate Guide to Vail in Winter with Kids for Non-Skiers. Speaking of dog models.....Below is Dori Stark, who as it turns out, is a natural. đ Watch for her occasional cameos on our Word PR Instagram page. 
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