‘Still in Edmonton’ creator moves to Saskatchewan

T-shirt designer moved away, but hasn’t given up his connection to the city Brandon Webber moved away to be closer to family.

EDMONTON— The man behind the sassy “Still in Edmonton” branding isn’t anymore. Brandon Webber came up with the phrase, which both celebrates and gently mocks the city, four years ago. He wanted to underscore that most “Edmonton” of traits — to criticize the city while continuing to live (and love it) here.

“Still in Edmonton” was first used for a project he designed for a friend in 2014, which involved a series of photographs from in and around Edmonton. Webber later put the phrase on T-shirts and created a website.

After the first round of shirts sold out, demand grew and Webber printed more. But they kept selling out and he kept printing more and before he knew it, it was something everyone in Edmonton knew about.

The shirts would pop up randomly — on the street, at school or even in the mountains — and would spark conversations about the city. They were a conversation-starter and an Edmonton-identifier.

Then, two years ago, Webber moved away.

Although the decision to head back to Saskatoon was strictly to be closer to family — “We had two kids ... so we wanted to be close to the grandparents” — Webber said he has not given up his connection to the city, as he still visits for work and to see friends.

Webber lived in Saskatoon before moving to Edmonton for work in 2011.

He said he believes the majority of the people who move to Edmonton usually don’t plan on staying here, but end up spending more time than they intended. “Edmonton grows on you and turns into your home,” Webber said, adding that’s exactly what happened in his case.

“We loved living in Edmonton. It grew on us, too, and it was a hard decision for us to choose,” he said.

Once he moved back to Saskatoon, he initially decided to shut the “Still in Edmonton” project down, but the retailers he was selling the T-shirts to convinced him to keep it going and even make it bigger.

“That mentality isn’t just limited to Edmonton,” he said.

So now his website is called “Still in town” and the T-shirts range from “Still in Calgary” all the way to “Still in Winnipeg.”

Although it has expanded considerably, that wasn’t Webber’s original plan.

“It’s not like I had a big, grand vision for this that I thought, ‘Hey, I’m going to build this huge company ... I feel what I wanted to use the project for was more like (to) open a discussion about how people feel (about) where they live,” he said. How Edmontonians feel about their city is an aspect he both loves and is bothered by.

“Edmonton says all the time that we want to be a world-class city, and so we aspire to big things, but in other ways, we seem to be stuck in small-minded thinking,” he said.

Webber gave the example of the ongoing parking debate in Edmonton. He said in bigger cities, most people living in the core either use transit or walk, yet in Edmonton, people insist on needing more parking downtown.

“So I think we aspire to big things, but we get in our own way,” he said.