Built from frustration.
How it started
I'm Evan Faucher, a designer and engineer from Colorado, now based in Philadelphia. Growing up in Colorado means you're outside constantly. Hiking, mountain biking, snowboarding. That relationship with the outdoors shaped how I think about products, things should be well-made, purposeful, and earn the space they take up.
I started running in college when a family friend invited me to do a marathon. I'd never run distance, but I said yes. Running stuck in a way I didn't expect. It cleared my head during stressful stretches of school, gave me space to think. It became less about fitness and more about how it made me feel.
After moving to Philadelphia, I trained properly for the first time. Four runs a week, consistent mileage, real preparation. I ran the D&L Marathon, crossed the line, felt good about the time. Months of early mornings had led to something that genuinely mattered.
The problem with everything else
The medal has been sitting on a shelf and that bothered me. Not for the recognition, but because the race meant something, and nothing in my home reflected that. So I did what I always do: looked at the market first, then decided to build something better.
What I found was disappointing. Shadow boxes. Flat map prints. Medal hooks. All of it generic, cheap, designed to be forgotten. None of it treated the race as the specific, earned experience it actually was.
What I kept coming back to: when I look at a map of a run, my eyes follow the route and I remember the race. The climbs. The hard miles. What I was thinking at certain points on the course. A map is a story. A medal is just proof you showed up. So why was everything flat? Why didn't any of it feel worth putting on a wall in a home you actually care about?
What we built
I built it myself. A metal frame, a 3D topographic 3D printed insert generated from the GPX data of your race, and a minimal data section with the stats that matter. When I hung the first one, I knew it was right. My eyes followed the route, the race came back to me, and the light catching the relief looked genuinely beautiful.
More than that, it made me want to add another. One race. One panel. Start the wall.
That's what Bonk Studios is. Made carefully, in small batches, to order. If you have questions, email me. I read everything.