Turning Inward: The Evolution of the Wolverine Brand
I connected with Wolverine Publishing’s owners Jeff and Amber in 2023 while my husband and I were living in our camper in Rifle for the summer season. Wolverine was producing guidebooks faster than ever, and they needed another designer to help keep up with the volume. Over the next few months, I learned a lot about Wolverine and was struck by how genuinely passionate the whole team was about the quality and impact of their work and the relationships they held with the communities connected to the books. The existing brand, which had been primarily focused on offering high-quality guidebooks, didn’t fully express who Wolverine was as a company. We agreed that sharing more would be a good place to start. I had the pleasure of learning about the company, uncovering its roots, and figuring out how Wolverine shows up for their community. This wasn’t about reinventing the company – rather, it was about looking inward. This compilation is the result of our (ongoing) work together.
–Stevie
Who is Wolverine?
The People Behind the Books
Turns out, it takes a lot of people to produce a guidebook. Our team is made up of authors, local experts, designers, publishers, photographers, editors, and more. What do we have in common? We’re all outdoor enthusiasts, and guidebooks take up a good portion of our bookcases. We’re driven to produce exceptional guidebooks that inspire adventure and bring people together.
Honoring Our History
Founder Dave Pegg and current co-owner Jeff Achey roping up at a backyard crag.
The original owners of Wolverine, Dave Pegg and Fiona Lloyd, were British ex-pats and passionate rock climbers. Dave founded Wolverine in 2002, and operated the company until his untimely death in 2014. Dave was an accomplished climber on the Sheffield scene in the UK in the 1990s, moving to the US to climb and work at Climbing Magazine. Fiona ran Wolverine for a couple of years, and is currently traveling the West in her live-in horse trailer competing in increasingly hair-raising riding events.
Today, we take great pride in carrying on Dave and Fiona’s tradition of creating guidebooks that inspire adventure and support the communities we love.
You can learn more about our history by checking out the timeline on our website.
What’s up with our name?
You may be thinking … why is this company called Wolverine? The story goes that years ago, at about the time Dave and Fiona founded the company, Fiona was near one of our home crags in Colorado and sighted a wolverine. The experience stuck with her, and so did the name.
What Drives Us
Core values are the foundation of a company. They are not aspirational — meaning they’re about who we are now, not who we want to be. These are the building blocks that have been with us from the beginning. Defining them not only helps us set a consistent path as our business grows, it also helps us connect with our community. It was important to us that our values were actionable, too.
Strengthening Community
We partner with guidebook authors that are passionate leaders in their communities. Each Wolverine guidebook sold supports those communities by donating to the non-profit organization that cares for the area.
Inspiring Adventure
Our guidebooks celebrate more than the classic routes. By partnering with local, knowledgeable authors, we celebrate each area’s history and the individuals and cultures that have shaped it. Along the way, we’ll lead you to seldom-traveled places you never knew existed.
Respecting the Environment
We produce durable guidebooks, with accurate and reliable information. Not only do our books last a lifetime, they’ll guide you to where you want to be quickly and efficiently.
What We Believe
We use guidebooks as much as our customers do. Our team hikes, rock-climbs, runs, skis, and boats. We know how frustrating it is to have a guidebook fall apart after a year of use, or to have to flip back and forth to find the picture of the climb that’s listed on one page but not shown on it. We’re also curious — we want to know about the areas we’re recreating in, and to help preserve them for current and future generations. The more we talked through our motivations for creating our books, we realized how important it is to us that our guidebooks are more than just guidebooks. And that’s where our tagline “Expect more from your guidebooks” came from.
“We believe that guidebooks should do more than describe terrain and the quickest path through it.
Yes, we want you to quickly find what you are looking for, whether it be a famous climb or classic ski tour. But if you hope to get off the beaten path, let us help you find a good place for that, too. Our guidebooks will help you discover things you didn’t know to look for.
Delve deeper into the landscape. Find places that exercise your skills, on a different rock type, an unfamiliar river, or a narrower couloir than you’ve done before. Improve your weaknesses and expand your horizons. Learn about the individuals and cultures that have helped shape your experience. While you’re there, we hope that you will thrive, connect, and strive to protect these wild places.”
Showing Up
There are a few ways that we connect with our customers and community. Our team lives and works all over the country, so we spend time at a wide variety of crags and trails. We look forward to interacting in person with the people and places we love. It keeps us connected and informed so we can produce genuine, knowledgeable content. Folks may hear about us, but not know what we care about. We took this new website project as an opportunity to reshape our digital presence into something that better reflects who we are and why we make guidebooks.
Evolving the Wolverine Brand
As a designer and brand strategist, I rarely recommend that clients take their brand back to ground zero to build something entirely new. There’s equity in the trust that Wolverine has built within the community through the brand, and as I said before, this process was about looking inward, not reinventing. Brands are like people — they grow and evolve over time. The little Wolverine logo has become a sign of quality, and as we continue producing guidebooks, our brand will continue to accumulate meaning. We updated our visual identity to honor where we’ve come from and more easily adapt to where we’re going.
Our updated logo system is more legible at a variety of sizes. We picked a clean, friendly typeface for our communications, and brightened our color palette to reflect the energy that we bring to work every day.
Building a Shiny, New Website
To better serve our customers and community, we updated our website to the one you’re reading this blog post on now. Here are some of our favorite features. (Check them out if you haven’t already!)
Stories
We’ve always had a blog on our website. We use it to talk about current events, cultural topics, and places we think you should go. Check out our newest post: Summer Climbing at the Gunks . This post is packed with tips for how to beat the heat when climbing at the Gunks in the summertime. You’ll find recommendations on what climbs to hit and when, best practices for sun protection, post-crag activities, and more!
Interior Book Pages
We want you to know what you’re getting into when you buy a Wolverine guidebook. That’s why we include the Table of Contents on all of our titles, as well as an example of what else you can find inside each book. Check out one of our newest books: Bishop Bouldering to check it out.
Filters
User experience is important to us — whether it’s a well-designed guidebook or an easy-to-use search function on the website. We spent time developing filters that we’d want ourselves. If you’re short on time, you can dial in the state, type of activity (like rock climbing or skiing), and what’s on sale and new. Our catalog isn’t huge, but this is a great feature for quick and easy navigating.
Store locator
Local shops provide services and information that you just can't get online. Please shop local when you can! We now have a map to help you find nearby stores that carry a selection of our guidebooks.
Blemished Books
Sometimes a cover gets a bit scuffed or bent, or interior pages are creased. Use the “Sale & New” dropdown on our new filter to sort blemished books, and choose “Blemished” condition when you add books to your cart. (Selection changes frequently.)
Looking Ahead
A brand refresh is never a quick process. Just like making a new friend, getting to know a company takes time. I spent hours sitting down over coffee (and sometimes beers) to get to know the Wolverine team and understand the nuances of publishing guidebooks. A year later, those conversations have not only resulted in new friendships, but they’ve culminated in a refreshed brand identity and website that tells the Wolverine story in a more relatable, inviting way. And now that the website is launched, I’m excited to be transitioning into an ongoing role designing guidebooks. My husband and I also decided to make Rifle a more permanent residence by buying a house! When I’m not climbing in the park, you can find me in our yard admiring our new compost bins, or working at the local co-working space.
See you out there!
