custom awards

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crafting awards for the winter dew tour 20th anniversary

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At Andrew Watson Design, it’s fair to say we’re all pretty into our snow sports. As a small awards business based in the beautiful mountains of British Columbia, just a short drive from the world renowned Whistler Blackcomb, it’s rather hard not to be. So when we were commissioned to design and create winners trophies for the prestigious 2024 Winter Dew Tour event - at the famous Copper Mountain, Colorado - we were eager to get started and bring the awards to life. 

An anniversary year, the 2024 Winter Dew Tour was a 20 year celebration of skiing and snowboarding. We knew the importance of creating unique, standout awards that captured the essence of freestyle snow sports and incorporated Dew Tour’s vibrant and playfully outlandish branding. Working from a clean slate, we custom designed and handcrafted awards completely distinctive to the event and Dew Tour brand. 

Copper Mountain was host to a mind blowing display of action throughout the weekend and we are proud to have supported such an incredible event, and to see our awards in the hands of the amazing winners. Each award included a brushed aluminum rod, to create a subtle handle for recipients to showcase the full award upon the podium — allowing Dew Tour’s dazzling colorway and gripping graphics to take center stage. Understanding the importance of high-level corporate branding, we employed UV flatbed printing to create a D shaped neon green back print, accompanied by Dew Tour’s trademark punchy purple and brand logo.

Andrew Watson Design is delighted to have worked with Dew Tour previously for the 2022 Des Moines street style skateboard competition and we hope to continue this relationship to craft fun and flamboyant awards for exciting events in the future.

custom awards for nutaku

Nutaku custom awards for employee recognition

Nutaku custom awards for outstanding achievements

Watson Design was tasked with crafting custom awards for Nutaku to celebrate outstanding achievements within their company and recognize employee success. Nutaku commissioned Watson Design to create high-quality, custom trophies that reflected their brand and remained completely bespoke. 

The awards were assembled using aluminum tubes with anodized aluminum. These materials combined with the print and design of the awards worked in unison to deliver a harmonized design. The angular lines of the award are echoed in the subtle geometric gloss print that wraps around, inviting the viewer to inspect each side. This adds depth and captures light in a playful manner as it bounces from one line to another. Working with aluminum tubing was not simple and required meticulous work to sand, finish and cap each end before assembling without any visible fixings. Each award was custom made following Nutaku’s style guide and personalized with different numbers, categories and names. 

In order to create an exquisite employee appreciation gift - in line with Nutaku’s corporate identity - Watson Design employed a variety of machinery and range of printing techniques including wide format flatbed, screen printing and sublimation. Watson Design specialize in the custom design and creation of unique hand-crafted awards.


custom dew tour awards for des moines streetstyle skateboard competition

Dew Tour Des Moines custom winners trophies

Custom winners trophies at the 2022 Dew Tour Des Moines

Watson Design was tasked with crafting custom awards for the Dew Tour Des Moines streetstyle skateboard competition — one of the most high-profile skating events in the world where only the most prolific sponsored skateboarders compete. Dew Tour commissioned Watson Design to design and create custom winners trophies that reflected their brand, event theming and skateboarding aesthetic. 

Seeking a dynamic design, Watson Design implemented a mixed-media approach to the awards using a combination of materials that included maple plywood, skateboard grip tape, semi translucent green acrylic, anodized aluminum and solid surface (meganite). Requiring five contrasting materials to be reliably printed on - including the unorthodox grip tape - the project pushed the boundaries of wide format printing and brought challenges to ensure the materials worked together to create a cohesive design. The final product successfully combined all the materials without displaying fixings to create a clean, unique and enterprising award that matched the brand style guide and brief set by Dew Tour. 

Almost 50 individually different custom awards were developed for this project utilizing Watson Design’s thorough methodology process and expertise in the creation of unique, handcrafted, custom designed trophies, awards and plaques.


hockey canada - custom hall of fame awards

hockey canada hall of fame award

Over the next few weeks we will be sharing some of our favourite projects from 2016.

The project above was a commission from Hockey Canada. We were requested to design a hall of fame award for their new inductees. The idea behind the design was to use the shape of 4 hockey stick handles and create the award around that size. The four sticks can be seen through the maple leaf relief cut, designed as a "peekaboo" detail. The wood was then affixed in-between two water jet cut aluminum panels. A modern design that is simple and elegant. 

The first recipient was Scott Niedermayer, he is a Canadian former ice hockey defenceman and current Special Assignment Coach of the Anaheim Ducks. He played 18 seasons and over 1,000 games in the National Hockey League (NHL) for the New Jersey Devils and Anaheim Ducks. Niedermayer is a four-time Stanley Cup champion and played in five NHL All-Star Games.  

wilson - major league baseball trophies

wilson sporting goods defensive player of the year

We were honoured this year to create a series of custom trophies for Wilson Sporting Goods. The trophies were being awarded to Major League Baseball players for the Defensive Player of the Year awards. We created 12 of these in different colours and also custom designed a glove stand to match the trophies. 

The Wilson Defensive Player of the Year trophies stand 2' (605mm) tall and 4" (101mm) square. Created from aluminium, a embossed leather winners swatch was inset into the trophy. Silk screened with white and metallic inks, these trophies are big and impressive! 

gap clothing - custom awards

GAP clothing awards trophies custom not glass or crystal corporate

We were given a short timeline (2 weeks) to design and create some awards for GAP Clothing. The brief was to create something less corporate and more 'crafty'. The result was these amazing string art awards that were custom designed and handcrafted to represent the textile industry. 

We used embroidery string for the centre feature and finished the inside and outside of the award in denim fabric. A tactile textile finish was contrasted against a minimal anodised aluminium finish to create a modern look. 

eco perpetual awards/trophies

eco sustainable perpetual awards and trophies Pine Beetle Wood denim pine

We can customise all of our award designs to suit any event. The design above is our 'Classic' design but, we created it in three different sizes for the clients particular needs; perpetual award ceremonies. With the largest award measuring almost 4" square (101mm), we made the other awards proportionally smaller. This particular design was created from recovered Pine Beetle Wood (denim pine) for an eco event. 

This is a great example of our flexibility and ability to fulfil any client request. Most standard trophy / award shops will buy product from a catalogue with set designs and sizes. We custom design and handcraft every award ourselves so, we have the capacity to create anything our clients desire.

When it comes to corporate recognition we are able to deliver the best products on the market. With original, modern and meaningful designs, our designers are able to create custom awards and trophies that make an impression and deliver on our clients specific communication goals. 

custom perpetual trophy

custom perpetual trophy moden design

We just finished this fantastic custom perpetual football trophy for our client. We specialise in custom corporate recognition products but, we can also design for sporting events.

This custom perpetual football trophy has been handcrafted from locally sourced Douglas Fir wood, anodised aluminium and finished with screen printed text and graphics. We believe that creating modern and unique sporting trophies is important as most sporting trophies are boring and mostly look the same (cup style). 

Andrew Watson Design specialises in custom handcrafted corporate recognition awards trophies and plaques. We work globally providing high quality custom handcrafted corporate recognition awards trophies and plaques to our clients in Canada, USA, Australia and New Zealand. We ship to all major cities and regional destinations.

let’s discuss your awards