My Conservation Story: Robin McCormack of Thunderbird Design

No one is born a “conservationist”. All of us have our own paths and stories of how wildlife and wild places became important to us. We love sharing the stories of how our members found their passion for conservation!

Hi, I'm Robin Akira McCormack. My connections to art and the outdoors started with a creative family who loved the outdoors. Growing up, I copied every X-Men, Spiderman, and Dragonball Z drawing my older brother, Kevin, created. Grandpa's house had walls covered in photographs from all his travels, and at home, Mom captured California landscapes with pastels. My parents were connected to the outdoors in their own upbringings and introduced us to it at an early age with hiking, road trips, and camping.

Our lives took a somber turn when I was 14. My older brother passed due to a rare bone cancer, and our family was shattered for a while. I was too young to get into any real trouble and spent a lot of time biking on trails in the neighborhood and down to the local sporting goods store. There, I discovered snowboarding and fly fishing. My father knew that I needed something to focus on, and he got me a fly fishing setup and later a snowboard. These two pursuits not only kept me out of trouble but also transported me away from the everyday world, allowing me to empty my mind and enjoy the mountains and the outdoors to this day.

As I entered adulthood, I leaned into my artistic roots, pursuing Graphic Design in college. Post-graduation, I worked, got married, and enjoyed a successful design career for over a decade now. When the pandemic hit, my wife and I began taking road trips, revisiting the places I grew up exploring. I was saddened to see the deterioration of many of these places. At one of our local hikes, beautiful sandstone boulders were now stained with graffiti, trails strewn with trash, broken bottles, and even discarded toilet paper.

The disappointment lingered, and since work had been paused due to the lockdowns, I began using my artistic skills for the first time to illustrate and design work inspired by the outdoors. What started as an exercise to stay busy slowly evolved into something else. I knew that I wanted my work to be a vehicle for making change and using conservation to protect and improve our outdoor spaces. And now that I’m a father, I hope my kids will learn to love the things I do.

I started out making art for myself, and the beautiful thing that quickly became apparent to me is that the art goes beyond self-expression; it builds a bridge with others who love what I love, and the work can connect and resonate with people. I continue to meet beautiful souls in the outdoor community and am super grateful for all the support I’ve been shown.

It’s fulfilling in a lot of ways, and I feel fortunate to be able to do it.

Cheers!

Check out my latest work on Instagram: @thunderbird_design
Say hi, and let's keep bettering our wild spaces together!