Thunderbird Country Club

Thunderbird Country Club.

Agency:

This project was completed while working as a Senior Designer at Sussner.

Thunderbird Country Club was the first 18-hole course in Palm Springs, the birthplace of the golf cart, and a club that hosted presidents and Hollywood royalty. Their history was there, but no one seemed to talk about it.

Permission to innovate.

Thunderbird invented the golf cart. The Ford Thunderbird is named after this club. They were the first 18-hole course in Palm Springs and hosted presidents and Hollywood royalty. What a place to be in the 1950s. The problem was that no one was left talking about it anymore, and the desert had filled up with competitors who were telling their own stories loudly. Three months of strategy revealed one thing: members weren't joining for the history anymore. They were staying for each other. Being first gave the club permission to innovate. Innovation built the community. The community was the story.

Awards:
“The Show” at AdFed 2026 for branding Thunderbird Country Club.

An unintentional evolution.

The logo had been reproduced and for decades. No guidelines, no master file, no single source of truth. Each time someone redrew it, something small shifted. By the time we got to it, nobody could tell you which version was correct. I spent hours digging through history books, old documents, and scanned photographs to find out why. Without it, any decision I made about the mark would have been a guess. I had the tools and expertise to make a change for the next 75 years.

After months of design, the logo went out in an email.

We worked on the strategy, logo, and branding for months. Our work was grounded in 75 years of the club's own history. Then the club released it to members over an email without warning. Members (appropriately) revolted against change, and wanted a vote to undo everything. A town hall was called, the full roadmap was laid out, and the floor was opened for questions. The uproar that was expected never came. Turns out the membership wasn't resistant to change. They were just wanted to know where the club was headed.

Honoring the past, while creating the future.

Like the logo, the colors drifted over time, becoming overly saturated and lost their mid-century touch. We refined them back to what they stood for. Mid-century turquoise and orange, with warm earth tones pulled from the desert landscape. From there, every element of the system was built on that foundation: patterns, photography, signage, the member kit. The result is a brand that lives at the intersection of mid-century and modern. Forty percent historic reference, Sixty percent modern evolution.

Since 1951

An identity system is only half the job. The other half is what the club actually says. Thunderbird's voice had been formal and distant for years, which made sense for a club leaning on prestige and history. We shifted the tone toward something warmer. Conversational. The kind of voice that draws you in rather than impresses you from a distance, and where headlines became invitations.

Signature Tournaments

Key members have left lasting legacies at the club, honored annually through tournaments bearing their names.

I took a deeper look into the club’s archives and found that we actually had signature's that belonged to each of the iconic members that the tournaments were named after. By designing recognizable busts, I created “Signature Tournaments” with unique marks for each honoree.

Celebrating the next 75 years

Thunderbird always had the goods. First course in Palm Springs, birthplace of the golf cart, a community that members genuinely love. The brand just needed to catch up to what the club actually was. Now members have a story they can tell. About where it started, where it is, and where it's going. That's what was missing for 75 years.