![]() Is mountain design the next big thing? NEWSLETTER / February 2023 CHAIR MAN Jeremiah Young, owner and creative director of Kibler & Kirch, is a modern Renaissance man. Along with his much sought interior design work, including major current projects in Colorado and Idaho, he is known as a guru of vintage cowboy style, and has been called on by Country Living to share his favorite “camp style” green paint and the Wall Street Journal for insight on designing with mounts. His Stapleton Gallery mentors rising Montana artists, and he brought Billings its first pop-up shop with Kibler & Kirch Presents. Now, Mountain Living provides a profile of Young as a chair designer – and appreciator – in its just-out March/April 2023 issue, where he discusses the crucial connection between anatomy and comfort and the “perfect yin-yang of masculine and feminine” in the best chairs’ lines, as well as the lure of timelessness, saying: “We want pieces that age so beautifully they only get better looking as the decades go by.” ![]() IT'S A LOG STORY Architectural Digest has called WRJ Design’s remodel of a dated 1960s home on a Jackson Hole ranch a “perfectly updated log cabin,” notes Jackson Hole magazine, which interviewed WRJ co-owner and creative director Rush Jenkins about the log home renovation trend for its new Winter 2023 issue. “Although no longer the dominant force it once was in the Jackson Hole materials palette, there’s still something special about living with log,” the magazine writes. For WRJ, that includes modern treatments to refresh log homes while honoring regional roots. In one small example that speaks volumes, Jenkins points to the cabin’s fireplace of locally sourced river rocks, which offers “a nice, natural element.” While retaining that original appeal, the team updated the fireplace’s “heavy mantel of knotty, knobby wood … with reclaimed timber, which is lighter and has a simplicity to it that can be more contemporary in the Western vernacular,” Jenkins says. (PC: Eric Piasecki) ![]() CAPTURED San Francisco Bay Area luxury publication Capture has again featured the work of JLF Architects in its new Winter 2023 issue (last year’s winter issue featured the team’s popular design of a Park City house that deftly combines historic rustic and contemporary elements). This year, the magazine turns its sights on a new Jackson Hole house that makes the most of its Snake River setting, talking with JLF principal John Lauman about how his childhood “steady diet of Legos” perhaps started him on the path to his now 26-year tenure with the firm. Lauman also discusses the importance of the firm’s Design-Build partnership with Big-D Signature and their sustainable approach to the featured “True North” house, including its relationship with its riverside site and the contributions of specific elements such as salvaged timber, regional stone, a new geothermal system and high-efficiency window glazing. (PC: Audrey Hall) PR TIP OF THE MONTH Mountain design is “the new black” National design editors, once mostly dismissive of Rocky Mountain West architecture and interiors, have begun seeking out regional work as not only relevant but popular with readers. While Covid wreaked havoc with designers’ schedules as supply chain issues caused major delays, the Westward expansion it inspired was real, encompassing mountain communities including Jackson Hole and Big Sky, Montana. Word PR client Susie Hoffmann’s Envi Interior Design introduced her fresh, fun take on Western contemporary – or “mountain minimalism,” as Mountain Living dubbed it – to the tony Yellowstone Club, “setting the trend for the whole community,” as an Envi client told the magazine. Says Hoffmann, recently interviewed for Big Sky Journal’s upcoming HOME issue, “I think design in Montana is on the leading edge of design nationwide. We've seen a progressive body of work come from our state.” Along with the raised national awareness, regional magazines – ideal for their ability to connect Mountain West clients with designers’ and architects’ most interesting work – have continued to grow. Last year’s Big Sky Journal HOME was catalog-thick and we look forward to the 2023 issue, while Cowboys & Indians is expanding its “Home & Ranch” section. We asked Mountain Living editor Darla Worden to comment on the trend: “Mountain Living continues to grow in size as we receive a record number of beautiful submissions from homes built in the Mountain West,” she responded by email. “We attribute the surge partly to the pandemic when homes were remodeled to fit the way we lived or new homes were built to reflect our new needs. I also wonder if the popularity of TV’s ‘Yellowstone’ with its spectacular scenery has spurred some of the growth.” |
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Word PR + Marketing October 2022 Newsletter
A better website … and national newsmakers! NEW LOOK “Your website is your number-one sales tool,” we preach to clients, nagging about needed digital updates that tend to languish too long on to-do lists. And we get it. Work on our own website often gets bumped down the list in favor of priority client work....
Word PR + Marketing April 2022 Newsletter
From top homes – to top bunks! HISTORY IN THE MAKING HISTORY IN THE MAKING “Every now and then, a design defies definition,” writes Big Sky Journal in the just-out HOME issue, its glossy, oversized and catalog-thick annual roundup of top Western design.”...
Word PR + Marketing January 2022 Newsletter
Off to a bang-up start… PICTURE PERFECT Getting in shape remains a favorite new year’s resolution, and with the pandemic still not entirely in the rearview, the New York Times recently reached out to Word PR requesting words of wisdom from WRJ Design on “How to Design a Home Gym that You’ll Actually Use.”...
Word PR + Marketing December 2021 Newsletter
Find your inner Santa... NO REST FOR THE WEARY Jeremiah Young has been making a list and checking it twice. Not only did the powerhouse owner and creative director of Kibler & Kirch transform the dining room of a stately manor-style Billings home he designed for clients with a classic sensibility...
Word PR + Marketing October 2021 Newsletter
Everything old is new again... THE WILD SIDE “There’s a reason Yellowstone National Park is known as ‘America’s Serengeti,’” writes Men’s Journal, recommending the winter snow coach safaris from Wildlife Expeditions of Teton Science Schools as one of its top 10 picks for “awesome wildlife-centric trips...
Word PR + Marketing June 2021 Newsletter
The power of nature - and art TOP OF THE LIST Brooks Lake Lodge & Spa, our historic guest ranch client deep in the woods of Wyoming, recently landed on two major media lists of best all-inclusive resorts, with U.S. News & World Report awarding it top honors...