Kastle came to us recently to work on several projects tying directly to their dealer network. The first one completed is a trophy for their four best dealers.
We based the design off the brand guidelines and added the oval cutout which is based off the Hollowtech technology in the skis. The final pieces are a mix of acrylic, laser cutting, laser etching and custom-made aluminum hardware.
The image is Kastle skier Chris Davenport taken by the Public Works on a shoot in Aspen.

Nothing makes work better than tying a lot of fun into it. We headed down to Crested Butte last Friday and hit the Rainbow Trail from Salida on the way. 100-mile single track that is a must-do for mt bike or moto.
From there it was on to Crested Butte where we met with the marketing folks at the resort.
We also spent some solid time with the whole crew at Match Stick Productions. They have just completed the edit of “In Deep” which will have it’s World Premier in Colorado instead of Canada for a change. Much easier to cross the border into Boulder rather than Vancouver.
We should have know when to call it complete day but dinner with the MSP folks transitioned into a serious Trailball game, many PBR’s and a late night.
This would have been OK if we didn’t need to be up at 6:30AM to do a extremely difficult 40+ mile moto ride to get to our meetings with Aspen Ski Company. Seemed as though the crew at Aspen were amused by our condition and smells coming off of us. Mike’s backpack opened at some point on the trip and literally lost his shorts so the day of meetings was spent in some tight red moto pants. Not that cool.
While in Aspen we also had a great meeting with Hamilton Sports where we will be doing some branding projects for Kastle Skis. Chris Davenport was nice enough to join us and offer up some opinions as he is the king of Kastle in the Aspen valley. 58 mile home and thinking that every day of business should be like that.
The last day of the trip we got Ian out for his first moto ride. Figured if he has worked with us this long he needed a bike so we could stop feeling guilty about leaving him behind. What was suppose to be a mellow ride had some hairball moments and ended up finishing at almost 50 miles. Ian killed it and I am sure we’ll be riding in his dust soon enough.

Crankworx, one of the biggest mountain bike festivals in the world, came to Colorado last week for the third consecutive year and we were asked to design and create the trophies.

We’ve been designing and building the trophies for Crankworx since the festival came to Colorado. The past two years we had incorporated laser cut, laser etched Plexiglas but this year we wanted to do it as eco-friendly as we possibly could.

The rockies have a huge issue with the pine beetle decimating the forests and leaving enormous swaths of red trees. There has been a push to figure out the best way to deal with these trees but as of now there doesn’t seem to be a huge demand. We decided to do our small part and utilize a few trees from our local forest.

We also decided to design the trophies around the concept of mountain bike features. In feature building there is an ethos around building out of natural materials from the forest and we decided to stick as closely to that as possible. We cut beetle kill from nearby woods, trailered it to the shop, and cut and milled it ourselves.

We came up with 3 different processes to mark the wood with the necessary branding and event/place call outs: silkscreen, laser etch, and hand burning.

We had never silkscreened on wood before and had never done anything with wood this fresh. Our first concern was that since the wood didn’t have time to cure that it would crack while it dried. After a little research we found Pentacryl an environmentally friendly wood stabilizer. It turns out the company had just relocated down the road from us several weeks prior and was more than happy to work with us.

Next we spent a day with Joe, a silk screening master living in Wheatridge. We spent the day learning the art of screening in Joe’s cramped tagged up garage dodging band equipment, art supplies, and a random mishmash of the usual garage/storage obstacles. It felt like the right place to be learning an art form popularized by Andy Warhol and used for band t-shirts and posters since the 60’s.

After a few hours of playing with the screens signs of a storm started to move in and within two minutes the barrage of wind and hail escalated to a deafening roar. Frank had forgotten his computer outsides and when he opened the door to save it a shotgun pattern of water and hail burst into the garage. We were all laughing hysterically until Frank tossed himself back into the garage with bloody legs from the hail and we all realized that we also had to brave the storm to make it back into the house. The storm past in less than 15 minutes and Joe was left with a broken bedroom window and a neighborhood that looked like an apocalyptic scene out of a Spielberg movie… other’s were left with worse:

Poor little guy never saw it coming.

Once we back in the mountains and sheltered from natural disasters we began the build process.

Then added some hand burned Trestles logos, lacquered everything, and packed up for delivery.

Then we filled up the truck with homemade waste oil biodiesel and headed out.

There was no question that we were bringing our bikes up to get some laps in after the delivery but we didn’t know until the night before that we would also be loaded down with PBR thanks to our good friend Stix.

Winter Park was fired up on the trophies and their share of the beers and we got to meet up with our good friend Kevin Kruse from Scott USA. Kevin was kind enough to let us borrow a few of the new whips and get some laps in the sickest bike park in Colorado!

Local eco materials, local vendors, a happy client, and some fun shredding… mission accomplished!

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80 pages, steel front and back cover and the printing looks beautiful.

HUGE thanks to Asuka book for the above and beyond customer service, quick turn times, and quality product!

Quote on cover under DVD:

A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both.

-François-René de Chateaubriand

We just had a great trip out to Chicago.  Toured the 80/20 facility and got to spend some great time with the founders and marketing team.  Check out their product at 8020.net. The Public Works has been using their “industrial erector set” in everything from library furniture to skate ramps. Great to see where it comes from and meet the crew.
From their we were off to McDavid sports equipment. Once again a great crew. Also amazing to walk through a door and see 100,000+ sq feet of manufacturing going on. A little different view than the doom and gloom you hear on CNN about American manufacturing!
We also had a chance to stop through the Chicago office of DraftFCB, which is one of the largest creative agencies in the country. We’ve done an assortment of work for them over the years and it was good to check out their massive Chicago set-up.
In the mix of all this Frank was also able to pick up his new Jetta TDI wagon. It will soon have Public Works produced bio-diesel pumping through it. Seems like a solid car as we proceeded to put about 3000 miles on it within 48 hours. One big fat raccoon was almost a victim but probably only lost a couple hairs off its tail.

We’re proud of our portfolio book. It’s big, shiny, and heavy… but it’s also expensive.

When we show it off we inevitably get asked if we can give them away and, as much as we’d like our work to be on display everywhere, it’s just too expensive.

With a couple of weeks left before SIA (the snow industry tradeshow in Vegas) we decided to design a take-down of the book that we could feel good about giving away.

This is what we came up with… It’s got a laser cut, laser etched bamboo logo, it’s bound with post consumer recycled material, and it includes a business card and portfolio DVD (with photo slide shows and plenty of video). The unit cost ended up right around $5 but the best part is that we can make them in small runs and cater the content to our specific needs… ie. this one is snow industry heavy because it was designed for SIA but we also have a engineering/prototyping/fabrication version as well and we can easily make brand/pitch specific mini books.

Here are some grainy low res point and shoot snapshots (I thought about putting some production value into the presentation on the blog but figured you’d get the point this way).

If you’d like one just drop us a comment and we’ll drop it in the mail.

Inside Front (click to make bigger)

Inside Back (click to make bigger)

Here is a display case we built to display Chris Davenport’s helmet and  14ers book.  Built for Red Bull to go into Jimmy’s Bar in Aspen.

We just finished installing Red Bull branded edit booths in the Woodward retail store at Copper Mountain.

Not only is it the only shop in Colorado with a built in skate bowl but now it has a brand new set of editing bays where anyone can come and do their best MSP, Absinthe, Coen Brothers impersonation.

Brand new Macs coming soon.

We recently finished and installed a Red Bull water feature at Spill in downtown Denver. The feature is about 8’ tall and estimated at around 1000lbs of concrete and steel (keep in mind this estimate was made after carrying it out of the truck and up a narrow steep set of stairs onto the rooftop bar). We delivered the feature just in time for Spill’s 4th anniversary party. After getting the monster up the stairs and installed we had plenty of time to sit back to share some drinks with Spill owners Chris and Kevin and enjoy a perfect summer night on their beautiful rooftop bar.Thanks to Chris and Kevin and especially to Dan who’s amazing concrete work made this piece what it is. 

Aspen Leaves in Aspen Mountain marketing collateral.