I had this little idea for a newspaper.

And then somehow that little idea became 5,000 full size newspapers rolling off a press.

Watching The R. Rebellion Times actually being printed, delivered, and opening that first copy was pretty damn special.

It is a little love letter to Pendleton, to the people and places we love, and to the traditions that make Round Up week what it is.

We made it our way, right here at home, and I am ridiculously proud of this one.

Round Up Edition No. 01.

Meet me in Pendleton.

There’s a Little More to This One

Maybe part of the reason this project meant so much to me is that newspapers aren’t entirely new territory.

Long before R. Rebellion, before designing websites and brands and packaging and perfume labels, I worked in the ad department at the East Oregonian as a graphic designer.

So there was something wonderfully full circle about sitting down all these years later and designing an actual newspaper again.

Except this time there was no client brief.

No one telling me what size the ad needed to be.

No one handing me the copy.

We got to decide what deserved the space.

The stories.

The photographs.

The businesses.

The people.

The history.

The weird little pieces of Pendleton that make this place what it is.

And then we sent the files off.

And Then It Became Real

That’s still one of my favorite parts of being a designer.

There is a moment when something exists entirely in your head.

Then it’s sketches and notes.

Then it’s a file on a computer.

And eventually, if you’re lucky, you get to hold it.

This one arrived in stacks.

Five thousand copies of an idea that hadn’t existed before.

There’s a video of them rolling off the press, and I could probably watch it a hundred times.

Ink.

Paper.

Machinery.

Stacks growing.

Something digital becoming completely, unapologetically physical.

After spending so much of my career designing things that live on screens, there’s still something magical about print.

Maybe even more so now.

No. 01

I think that’s my favorite part of the name:

Round Up Edition No. 01.

Because it quietly says there might be a No. 02.

And there will be.

There are more Pendleton stories I want to tell.

More history I want to dig into.

More people I want to talk to.

More things I want to make.

But I’ll always have this one.

The first.

The little idea.

The 5,000 newspapers.

And the moment I opened one and thought:

Holy shit. We actually made this.