In honor of Father’s Day this coming Sunday, our Design Highlight(s) of the week are three of our more masculine designs (or at least more gender-neutral designs). One is an oldie-but-a-goodie that we’ve included in our June 2019 collection (Behold the Summit), one is a design from our Compassion Collection that we’ve actually highlighted before (Terry in His Heartland), and the last is absolutely brand-new and just days old (Inhale the Future).
Behold the Summit is one of our earliest designs from our original collection of yoga mats that we released more than a year ago. (Hard to believe it’s already been a year since we launched this thing!) It’s a watercolor by Karla and features a misty mountainscape filled with fir trees and snow drifts. Now that the hot weather of June is upon us, we thought it would be a nice throwback/reminder of what the landscape looked like 6 months ago and will look like again 6 months from now. (At least for those of you who live in the northern half of the northern hemisphere AND are within eyesight of mountains.) One of the most interesting things about this design is that it’s by Karla, who grew up in the Philippines and has never actually seen snow OR fir trees in person. However, she’s easily our most “outdoorsy” designer, and she’s an avid world traveler, so she views it as an aspirational piece of things yet to come.
Terry in His Heartland, on the other hand, is one of our most personal designs, for a whole bunch of reasons. First of all, it’s part of our Compassion Collection, whose mats are priced a bit higher than our “normal” mats, with the difference going to a particular charity associated with each mat. In this case, the price difference goes to Dian Fossey’s Gorilla Fund. In addition, “Terry” is a reference to my dad, a great big gorilla of a man who died 19 years ago this spring from complications due to diabetes. As I mentioned in my earlier blog post about this design: “One of my favorite childhood memories occurred on a family trip to the San Diego Zoo. My dad sat on a bench outside the gorilla habitat with my little brother and me for over an hour. My dad led this observation, and by his example we were content to sit there and simply be present. Thomas and I were — incredibly — not impatient, and we didn’t bug my dad to hurry up so we could move on to the next awesome thing. We sat there with him, in peaceful and somewhat sad observation.” The whole post is too long to quote here, but I think it’s worth a read — it makes it clear why this design is so important to me, personally, and why it’s such a fitting Father’s Day design highlight.
Lastly, Inhale the Future is brand-new with our June 2019 yoga mat collection, and it’s a new abstract graphical style that we’re trying out, with simple (yet sophisticated!) linework and larger swaths of solid colors. This design is also by Karla, and while both yoga mats represent mountainscapes, they’re totally different in both style and feel, which goes to demonstrate both Karla’s artistic diversity and her wide range of talents.
Three very different designs in three very different styles, but they do share one thing in common — any one of them would make a great Father’s Day gift! To make that gift even easier to give, take $10 off any of these three designs through Father’s Day this coming Sunday using the promo code DADSDAY at checkout! (And, because it does take us a little time to print, box and ship our beautiful suede yoga mats, you can also give that dad in your life a personalized gift certificate good for these or any of our other yoga mats. We’ll design the gift certificate and email it to you straight away, and you can either forward that certificate to your intended recipient electronically, or you can print it out and slip it into an envelope yourself.) Happy Father’s Day, everyone! Love you, dad, and miss you deeply!