This design takes its cue from classic Western poster art. It shows a lone cowboy riding through a desert landscape, framed within a tombstone shape. He’s armed and looks slightly unhinged. Cactus silhouettes, warm tones and simple shapes give it that old frontier feel. At first glance, “Swansea, Arizona” seems like a mistake, but it’s a real place. Now a ghost town, it was founded in the early 1900s during the copper mining boom. The link to Wales runs deeper than the name. Copper ore from the area was once shipped to Swansea in Wales - known at the time as “Copperopolis” - for smelting. That connection stuck, and when a local smelter was built, the town took the name Swansea. Like many mining towns, it didn’t last. By the 1930s the mines had closed and the town was left behind. The design plays on that contrast - a Welsh name set in a desert landscape. A clean, retro-style graphic that blends Western imagery with a small piece of industrial history.
