New Portfolio Book!

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

Red Bull Big Tune Denver

We recently shot the Red Bull Big Tune event at Beta Nightclub in Denver. Super fun event to watch as hip hop producers battled head to head with their custom tracks. Based off an event originally created in Jamaica it really packed in the crowd and opened our eyes to something new. From a shooting perspective it was a fun challenge to work around the crowd and shoot in the almost pitch dark conditions while trying to maintain the feeling of the atmosphere. The portraits of the producers we shot the night before were playing on the jumbo-tron so some of these shots have photos of our photos.

Check out more at http://www.redbullbigtune.com/

Boon Doc wins the event

We shot these portraits at dinner. Much easier to bring the studio to where people are eating, drinking and being happy.

Public Works Client and Vendor Visits in Chicago

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.

MiniBook

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)

Sneak Peak: Portfolio Book

Our portfolio book has been a huge asset to us over the last few years but it was beginning to feel a bit outdated and in need of an upgrade.

We’ve been working hard on the massive project of overhauling the book for quite awhile now and figured we’d release a sneak peak of some of the progress.

The original book is 40 glossy pages of our design, engineering, prototyping, photography, and marketing capabilities bound with a laser cut metal front and back cover. We are close to finishing the upgrade to 80 pages including a ton of new projects and a full photography portfolio section.

Here are the intro pages from the photo section. Please let us know what you think.

PowWow

The Public Works co-founder Mike Arzt sat on the panel at the PowWow in Whistler this Saturday and discussed our involvement with Helly Hansen, our bio-diesel processor project with Mark Abma, and lent his expert insight on a variety of topics.

The PowWow was an invitation-only mountain sport marketing summit that Origin co-presents during the TELUS World Ski and Snowboard Festival provided a unique opportunity for industry leaders to come together to discuss marketing trends and challenges. The day-long symposium combined with evening outings to some of the Festival’s hottest events, made for a great couple of days.

Josh’s [Spear] presentation was followed by a panel discussion entitled “Branding in Snow Sports: How to stay plugged in to a changing marketplace” featuring Whistler Blackcomb’s president and COO Dave Brownlie, Spy Optics VP of Marketing Fran Richards, North Face Canada Marketing Manager Corey Stecker, and the Public Works partner Mike Arzt.

1Step Launch Party

The Public Works team just returned from a trip to Whistler for the Telus Festival, the 1Step launch party, and a biodiesel processor project (more on that prjoect coming soon).

1Step is Mark Abma’s foundation.   The goal of 1STEP is to find and communicate practical ways for winter sports communities worldwide to practice their sport with sustainability in mind. Whether it’s at a resort or in the backcountry, 1STEP is dedicated to finding ways of making sure that the environment isn’t harmed and that local economies and communities are strengthened in the pursuit of winter play.

The foundation collaborates with industry sponsors, resorts, athletes, skiers, snowboarders and sledders as well as members of academia, government and non-governmental organizations to find innovative solutions to climate change that mean we can enjoy our winters now and in the future.

The Launch party was held in Blake Jorgenson’s gallery in the Whistler village.  The room was full of friends, family, and industry icons.  Drinks flowed as everyone mingled, put in thier bids for the silent auction, and enjoyed amazing hors d’ oeuvres.  The live auction was lively and fun with a couple of good battles over a 4 day Whistler vaction package, a pair of Abma’s new Shogun Salomon skis, and a dinner with the chef of the night.

More info at http://www.1stepnow.org

Here are a few photos from the night:

1976 Games!

Another year of snowlerblades, skinny skis, and stretchpants.

Mix Master Mike and DJ Z-Trip murdered the ones and twos keyboards, some people did some spread eagles and hoola hoop tricks, and many Red Bulls were consumed.

Thanks to OC and the rest of the crew!

Photofiles link

Selkirk

Another Helly Hansen photoshoot at Selkirk Wilderness Skiing produced and managed by the Public Works.

“Statistics don’t do Selkirk justice. Sure, 78 square kilometres (30 square miles) is big. Bigger than all of Vail and Whistler-Blackcomb combined. With only 24 skiers maximum per week, visitors to Selkirk Wilderness are guaranteed over 80,000 vertical feet of untracked bliss. But, like we just said, statistics don’t do it justice. “

The lodge is beautiful and comfortable, the food is amazing and plentiful (bacon breakfasts and constant cat ride feeding rendered some serious heli-belly by the end of the week), the staff was friendly, fun, knowledgeable, and accommodating, and the terrain was endless.

For most of the shoot we broke into two groups… the group with sleds and the cat group. The sled group was basically just the MSP crew: Murray Wais filming, Blake Jorgenson shooting and Mark Abma, Eric Hjorleifson, and James Heim skiing. The cat group was John Roderick on motion, Mark Gallup on stills, and JP Solberg, Lisa Filzmoser, and Chris Davenport riding.

Check out a few photos:

[note: the tree burning, while extremely fun (especially when the tree is lit with a roman candle), is actually fire mitigation and prevents the red trees from burning in the summer when the whole hill could go up... so please no angry patchouli-scented comments.]

Portchester

After spending a few days with the Aspen Patrol I headed out on a mission with Adam Moszynski, Danny Brown, Tony Prikryl, and Darcy Conover to Portchester. We took our time and enjoyed the sunshine on the skin out. Ended up taking 4.5 hours from the base of Highlands to dropping in on our line.