Over 100 top-tier and up-and-coming street and park skateboarders recently descended on Portland, Oregon’s historic Waterfront Park for the inaugural Rockstar Energy Open. The event showcased a mesmerizing display of skating across street and park formats and kept fans entertained all weekend with live music, art installations and more.
As big advocates of action and board sports at Watson Design, we were delighted to be given the opportunity to create custom trophies for the event, allowing us to bring exciting exclusive designs to life and include our own influence.
The celebration of skateboarding culture brought together the world’s best skaters with the next generation through an open invitation format, that saw skaters have the chance to compete with invited pros using a video qualifying series (VQS). Videos were judged by fans and experts for a chance to compete in Portland.
For the inaugural event, we wanted to ensure we created something truly unique, that reflected the energy and vibrance of skate culture and the stimulating Rockstar Energy brand. Avoiding the generic sports trophy style, we combined meganite with the warm tones of maple wood and added anodized aluminum for additional intricate detail. As skateboards are made of maple wood, the inclusion of the material brought cohesion between product and real-life activity.
The large flat space on the back of the meganite provided the ideal surface to add custom UV prints, capturing the essence of the Rockstar brand and street culture with bold branded text complimented by a graffiti style rose graphic in Rockstar’s standout gold colorway. For further detail and bespoke branding, we replicated the bold text and Rockstar logo in a continuous pattern around the edge of the meganite.
On the front side, the smooth clean cut of maple wood is on full display, contrasting majestically with the dark meganite base visible around the edges. More UV prints allowed us to add further custom details to outline the award category and finishing position of the athletes.
Displayed proudly at the top of the wood are aluminum plates anodized in gold, silver and bronze for each finishing position and award. The plates feature more striking text and logos to showcase the Rockstar brand and evoke a sense of pride amongst the recipients through a distinct and modern custom sports trophy.
Following the same design style, we crafted the trophies in a circular shape to create bonus awards for best trick jam in both the street and park categories. The event proved to be a major success and we are proud to have supported it with the contribution of our awards and were delighted to see them upon the podium in the hands of the winners.
Check out the Rockstar Energy and Platfrm Instagram channels to see our awards pictured with the winning skaters and find out more about the event.
