WORDS: Anna Langer

NITRO – PRO SERIES ‘GROSS OUT KIDS’

While most brands involve their riders a lot in their individual pro models or even let them create it from scratch (like travis Rice, whose board we featured on this page at the beginning of the season), Nitro this year has followed a different path by giving each rider an individual top sheet in a line of boards.

Looking for a theme that captures the personality of each member of the team and at the same time makes up for a cohesive story, Nitro team manger Tonino, Creative Director Mike Dawson and artist Paul Brown decided it was a fun idea to transform the riders into ‘Garbage Pail Kids’, a series of trading cards that was popular in the US and Australia in the 80’s.

Mimicking the originals by cartoonist Art Spiegelman, where all characters had funny names and some kind of peculiar abnormality, Nitro’s ‘Gross Out Kids’ are mainly based on word plays with the rider’s names. “Tonino and I came up with names that fi t either a personality trait, their physical appearance, or something in their name” explains Paul.

So without involving the snowboarders themselves but just based on his perception of each of them and stories he heard about them, Paul surprised them with their very special alter ego.

The best combination of word and character play is probably Cheryl Maas’ model. Nicknaming her Cheryl Massive is as obvious as it is brilliant: “I think Cheryl pulls lot of weight as a female snowboarder,” Paul explained. “While she is still very girly, she’s a lot more rugged and tougher than your average shred-girl and can get as gnarly, if not gnarlier, than any guy. And drawing her with arms ripped off was just to good not to do!”

Bryan Fox’s character is a similar play of name and character. As Bryan is an artist himself, the spray can immediately came to Paul’s mind. “He’s sly like a fox too, so putting him in a bloody fox pelt and let him sneak around was a good way to go.”

Also Jon Kooley’s alter ego kind of almost made up itself. With tattoos all over his body, giving him “the sailor/anchor thing just kind of came naturally.” And with a last name like this, you don’t even need to think of a funny nickname, let alone come up with a better situation for a character than an ice block.

A-Bomb Austin on the other hand is based on Austin Smith’s physical appearance. “He always has crazy hair that looks like he just woke up, so we thought the explosion messing up his hair would make a funny image,” Paul smirks. And based on his riding you could definitely call him a bomb.

While the character for Markus Keller is only a funny word play with ‘Messed Up’ at first glance, you get the deeper sense of the art when you know that he is sponsored by Red Bull and he is ‘hopped up on energy drinks”, fi guratively pierced on the bull’s horns.

The most loosely connected character is probably the one of Eero Ettala. “I just liked the name combo of ‘Eerie’ and ‘Eero’,” Paul remembers Paul. So he turned Eero into a Halloween-style Dracula, which is actually quite the opposite of the calm Finnish pro, who was even a bit surprised as he “didn’t think (he was) really that creepy”.

So instead of asking them for their input, Nitro decided to surprise their team with something completely unique: their very own comic character. And we think that whether it really fi ts them or not, in our world of mainstream individualism and copy-pasting it’s always refreshing to see a different approach to top sheets once in a while.

Words: ANNA LANGER

In this page we are always talking about the connection between art and snowboarding and as photography is the most prevalent art form in snowboarding we chose photo topsheets for this months dissection. Chris Prosser was only given one word as inspiration for his designs for the 2010/11 collection of YES. boards and that was YES. Romain De Marchi and JP Solberg, part owners of the label, were more than happy with the unique way he accomplished the task. “He came out with the dudes of history pictures which I think is a really powerful statement,” said Romain, “I’m not always a fan of pictures on a board but those ones were well done and I’m really proud of this graphic.” “The whole concept start to fi nish was perfectly executed” added JP.

Putting black and white portraits on the topsheet may seem a bit odd at fi rst, especially as none of the dudes has any relation to snowboarding. But if you look at the whole series of the Great Dudes Of History featuring Albert Einstein, Martin Luther King JR, Abraham Lincoln, Haille Selassi, John Lennon and JFK, the pieces start coming together. “The ‘dudes’ all had one major thing in common: they all stood up and said YES WE CAN, just like the YES. NOW BOARD snowboard company. They were all revolutionaries, freedom fi ghters and generally righteous dudes,” Chris explains. Picking them was almost a no-brainer. “It was totally clear immediately. As soon as they told me how many boards we had to work with I just whittled down the people I wanted on there.”

The simplicity of the photos is key for the power of this board graphic or as Chris puts it: “The photos get the idea across, point blank. They are all famous portraits and amazing pictures.” Keeping the rest of the design really old-school and plain only adds to the effect. And with the similarity between all the portraits the whole series also makes a really great collectors item; it’s already decorating the drinks corner at JP’s home.

But of course it’s also the dudes themselves: “I would hope that you associate each of them with being pretty righteous individuals, dudes with a greater cause. They all preached or represented a higher level of being and I would also hope that people could apply that higher level of thought to themselves,” says Chris. Martin Luther King and his fi ght for civil rights is probably the easiest to get, as is John Lennon who was spreading the ideas of love and peace, long after the flower power movement had wilted. Abraham Lincoln, whose ambition was to end slavery in America, and Haile Selassie, a messiah of the Rastafarian movement, not only fought for what they believed in but also inspired others, while Albert Einstein and his theories opened new horizons of thinking, as did the politics of John F. Kennedy.

You can of course always argue that printing a photo doesn’t have a lot to do with art but as Chris counters, “it is graphic design; some people consider that art and some people don’t. I’m not necessarily concerned about that. I wanted a powerful board graphic with a positive image”, which is something both Romain and JP back him up on: “You can have anything for a graphic if it makes sense, right?” So lets draw this page to an end with the words of one of the Great Dudes, JFK, “If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him.”

Words: Anna Langer

We’ve already highlighted the strong link between snowboarding and art in the last few issues of this season. For ride Snowboards this was true rightfrom the brand’s inception in the early Nineties, long before it became fashionable to spice up a collection with the odd bit of artist work and use the added marketing value.

Using artists’ work for their board graphics has a long tradition with Ride; to them they are “free thinkers” who express themselves through their art as we do through snowboarding. And just like there are almost as many different steezes out there as there are snowboarders, the artists and their backgrounds, techniques and styles couldn’t be more diverse.

Spacecraft, founded by Stefan Hofmann (a passionate snowboarder who spent his time at art school living on a couch in a studio and riding whenever he had any spare time) and fellow artist and traveller Sarah O’Brien Parker, have already made quite a name for themselves in the boardsports scene. They spend summers creating beanies and designing epic stickers and t-shirts, but move back to Cascade Mountains in Canada come winter to hibernate. As the all-rounders they are themselves, they gave an all-mountain board, the Highlife, a brand new look with one of their iconic, detailed drawings on the topsheet.

Art Chantry may not be that big player a in the snowboard world, but he sure is in the fi eld of art and design. His graphic designs were even shown in the Louvre, which probably makes him the most well-known snowboard graphic collaborator in history. His roots are deep in the punk rock scene of the late 70s and early 80s, though, and in the 90s he did cover art for bands such as Nirvana, Hole and The Sonics. His lowtech style is the perfect fi t for Ride’s DH, their classic freestyle board, which he’s pimped with one of his signature collage designs.

In contrast, Prefab 77 is a collective of artists and they don’t really have any direct connection to boardsports or snow. But their slogan “Time to stop believing in authority and start believing in each other!” and sarcastic statements such as “the fl ammability (of our pieces) makes them a sound investment for the future as fuel prices increase to rise,” are more than clear proof of the free thinking that Ride sees connecting art and snowboarding. Their wild designs, mixing acrylic, spray-paint, varnish and inks, work more than well on the freestyle gun, the Machete.

Number 4 in the collab pond isn’t exactly the biggest fish, but certainly is the biggest enigma. Based in LA and called Tastes Like Gold (a phrase this artist uses to describe the peak of an artistic career), that’s about all you’ll fi nd out about this person. But the artwork speaks for itself, especially in the case of the Crush where the graphics are only really visible in the cold – where a snowboard belongs. It’s also the only design in this line of collabs that has a slightly different top sheet on each length; a closer look will reveal that they’re all part of one bigger picture. Apparently that is still neither enough art nor enough exclusivity for Ride, so this year’s collection also includes two special limited edition highlight boards.

The DH 2.4 (that was released 1st of Oct) and 2.5 (to be released 1st of Nov) were so top secret that no matter how much we squeezed our buddies at Ride, they wouldn’t tell us anything about them. So while one mystery should be solved by now, the second is still to come.

ridesnowboards.com

spacecraftclothing.com

artchantry.com

prefab77.co.uk

tastelikegold.com