How to Align Your Product with the Western Aesthetic

Collaborating with a designer and artist is a great way to align your product with the Western industry.

You can never own a horse and still appreciate the Western lifestyle. That can be said for any subset of culture. It’s the emotional, intangible elements present that allow you to appreciate a lifestyle even if it’s not yours.

For the Western aesthetic, it’s elements like perseverance even in the face of uncontrollable factors, a passion for life, and the grit people within that lifestyle possess that is attractive. Aligning your product or service with it says that you believe or are also inspired by those things.

Subsets of the Western Culture

But if perseverance and passion are the intangible, what’s the tangible cues? For one, there’s a lot and they break down into two categories: general and niche iconography.

In general, you have the basic things like horses, horseshoes, boots, saddles, certain styles of cowboy hats, cows, truck and trailer, snaffle bit etc. These images are created in a way they appeal to almost anyone who appreciates the Western lifestyle. For the people living that lifestyle they may or may not appeal depending on the amount of authenticity shown.

That’s where niche comes in. Western lifestyle can be broken down into a complex list of smaller sections. You have sections like rodeo and ranching, which are different but also similar. Within ranching the styles change with the environment. You probably won’t see batwings or a taco shaped brim in the Montana area. Not to say it isn’t there, but regionally that style is more often seen across regions around Texas and New Mexico. With rodeo a fan that goes to the NFR would be different from one that goes to the world finals of the PBR.

Creating Products that Resonate with the Western Audience

Say you want to create a product that targets the Western lifestyle, how do you go about creating something that will resonate? I suggest two things: research and collaboration.

Research can be in person where you actually attend a specific event or series of events prior to launching a product to talk with people and get a feel for the atmosphere. It can also be social where you find accounts and check out what people are posting and saying by searching specific tags, regions or events.

Collaboration is all about finding the right person or business within the Western industry to work with. You are bringing your product expertise to the table and they bring their knowledge of the lifestyle. Collabs can be with a creative to help design marketing materials, product design, or packaging; with an influencer to help place your product in the right environment and give social proof; or event-based where your product sponsors an event which gets it in front of attendees or in their hands.

How Do I Help Businesses Tap into the Western Lifestyle?

I help businesses tap into the Western lifestyle by creating illustrations and designs that align with their desired audience. Images are effective ways to communicate complex ideas or intangible feelings and there are certain motifs within the Western culture that are accepted universally as inspiring, motivational or powerful. A woman riding a bucking horse is instantly inspiring, but a woman on a bucking horse launching over a snake striking and you’ve got a recipe for powerful and inspiring.

Interested in capturing the spirit of the western aesthetic for your product(s)? Fill out the form below to request a free 15 min collab consult.