New Era x Bowl-A-Rama
As a kid who grew up living and breathing skateboarding, I used to dream of one day going Australia’s world famous, Bowl-A-Rama. It was quite surreal to finally attend the event after all these years - and an absolute trip to be involved in it in the way that I did.
I was commissioned by New Era to co-design and activate their booth at the event - and design and create the gifts for the OG’s of the event. The OG’s were not just VIP’s of the event and pioneers of the sport - but many of the same guys that I spent countless hours playing with on Tony Hawk Pro Skater and the very reason I loved and got into skating in the first place. Tony Hawk, Bob Burnquist, Rune Glifberg and Steve Caballero to name a few....
Brisbane Studio
The first step was coming up with the booth concept and layout. Once we had a solid game-plan, it was time to get the booth underway and get cracking onto the patch designs and the gifts for the OG’s.
The patches were the easy part as I had already made a million of these before. The patches were going to be used as a live ‘embellishing’ activation - with punters being able to pick n’ choose their favourite patches and have them affixed to their new, new era cap!
The gifts - not as easy. For some insane reason, I was fixated on the idea of making something out of wood, which had me buying a laser engraver.
Like most things, it started with a sketch and few different concepts. After a few goes and plenty of over-thinking, I came up with the final concept - which was what I thought was the perfect nod to New Era but in a new and fresh way, whilst incorporating my art and vision and with a personal handmade touch.
Once I had designed the plaques, it was time to turn the laser on and figure out how TF to use it (I had never seen or used one prior). Fast-forward many stressful, confusing hours and a day or 2 of no sleep, we figured it out. Once we had the artwork etched, it was time to get my hands dirty - with hand-cutting them out, sanding smooth, timber staining & sealing!
Sydney Studio
Once the gifts were finished and the patches had arrived it was time to head down to Sydney for the finishing touches on the booth. As usual, the patches arrived late - which left me less than 24 hours to complete the booth.
The Event!
We bumped in early AM to get the booth setup, make sure the patch embellishment station was ready and we were good to go! Once the event started, I kicked off the live painting of the outside of the booth. As usual the event was absolutely bustling so was as fun as it was tiring ha ha.
On the second and final day of the event we gifted the OG’s their new 1 of 1, Steen Jones artwork ..what a trip!
