Bringing Brands to Life with Lincoln Design Co.

With a client roster that includes world-class brands like Hot Wheels, Tony Hawk, Nike, Universal Pictures, Monster Energy, and Hasbro, Lincoln Design Company is anything but traditional. Its designers and illustrators are skaters, snowboarders, whiskey collectors, disc golfers, and more. They pull from their daily lives and experiences to bring brands to life, whether it’s a branding project, advertising, packaging, apparel, style guides, or motion graphics. “It’s one of those things where you kind of attract the things you love to do,” says Dan Janssen, owner and creative director of Lincoln Design Co. “We try to understand and participate in the markets that we design for. That means we’re able to speak their language right off the bat without having to do a ton of research and start from scratch every time.” The Vancouver-based company grew out of Janssen’s work nearly 25 years ago in San Diego, where he worked for DC Shoes before founding the design studio that would later become Lincoln Design. In 2015, he changed the firm’s name and moved to Portland, bringing three of the firm’s employees with him. “We were working with Nike, coming up once or twice a year, and we fell in love with the creative culture and the art scene in the area,” Janssen says.

The team settled in to a little loft in SE Portland before moving to a new spot where they could build a mini ramp on site, allowing employees to get some skateboarding in between creative sessions. They quickly outgrew that space and moved across the river to Vancouver, where the company’s office sits today. A brand design and creative agency that specializes in the action, lifestyle, fashion, outdoor, and entertainment industries, Lincoln Design Co. creates visual solutions that elevate brands. Unlike other studios that focus on either design or advertising, often subcontracting out other capabilities, Lincoln Design Co. combines illustration, design, and advertising with motion, all in-house. “Everything nowadays needs to move—static images aren’t enough, so we’re diving pretty heavily into motion graphics and videography,” Janssen says.

Technology plays a huge role in how Lincoln Design Co.’s teams bring concepts to life. Nothing is done with pen and paper—it’s all digital, and the software used in the industry is increasingly enabled by AI.“There are a lot of designers who are a bit afraid of AI, that it might take the place of logo designs, but we try to keep up on what is changing,” Janssen says. “It can speed up the early stages of the process, but it’s the life experiences—the things we’ve seen and done, and where we’ve lived and traveled—that are the real inspiration in our work.”Thank you to A. wordsmith for writing this article & Dan Janssen Owner & Creative Director at Lincoln Design Co.