Welcome to a five-series deep dive into the creative process and artists behind this year’s Coalition Snow 25-26 winter ski and board designs. Creative Director Andrea Slusarski will be sharing her insights into the collaborations and creations that make designing your favorite topsheet designs. Follow along in real time on our Substack.
Welcome to the first of five Behind the Designs features on the artwork and collaborations for Coalition Snow’s 25-26 winter lineup. As a creativity professor, I think of the creative process as following the steps of Preparation, Incubation, Insight, Evaluation, and Elaboration. This is a template, a place to start from. As a teacher of art, it is helpful to ground students in identifying what various aspects of their process are so they can begin to be self-aware. However, as a practicing designer and creative director, there is also a loosening of those definitions and giving into the collaboration process.
I’ve been filling sketchbooks with snowboard designs since my teenage years. As a snowboard art kid, the designs that fill my winters’ memories are like artworks to me. So when it comes time to begin the design process, I immediately turn to my sketchbook to play around with ideas.
Along with my sketchbook practice, I love to dive into a research pool. Swimming through the imagery and artistic knowledge that my art educator and fine art background prepared me to do. For this winter line, I was piecing together French women’s rights protest posters, patterns, and works of contemporary art by some of my favorite female artists. Eventually, my creative process in research and journaling led me to put together an initial pitch. So in November of 2023, Gurecki and I had a big convo on direction and visuals.
Check out my sketches/design process share slides here
It always amazes me to see how concepts evolve, some go in completely new directions and some get pretty spot on (like the image below - Bliss Process). Collaborating means creatively working together to make the best decisions for the final end product. When artists are given space to bring themselves (aka their own work) into design, there’s a fun process of hearing everyone’s feedback and refining. The best ideas come from each other; creatives work well here when they share and give critique.
The process of collaborating with artists in ski/board design is about allowing their process to work within the parameters. I’ve experienced this as a collaborating artist myself with previous Coalition Snow designs on the Sojourner and the Myth. This season, I enjoyed being able to connect with artists to let them share their amazing work on our boards and skis.
Inspiration past CoalitionSnow moon phase ski & board designs
This 25-26 collection of skis/boards truly feels like my best creative work to date. I’m really proud to share with Coalition Snow skiers and riders our artists and the visuals for each design in the collection. For me, my initial dreams were to pay homage to some of my favorite designs from the catalog. As a young padawon, I’ve learned a ton from Coalition Snow OG Designer Lauren Bello Okerman and all of my creative chats in van rides with Jen Gurecki helped prepare my creative skills. Some connections to the Coalition Snow history with the 25-26 winter line you may see are the large monstera leaves and moon phases. Similar motifs I loved when Lauren did with the “red poppies” and her own moon phases.
As I continued to find connections with the inspiration for the lineup, I aimed to find the balance of art/design, technique/intuition, beauty/bold. This was all made possible by the awesome collaborations with some of my personal art (s)heroes Latasha Dunston-Greene (Jitterbug Art), Noelle Phares, and Lisa Congdon - the collection started to take form into a lineup rich in creative connections in art + design.
Connecting with Artists
Part of the Coalition Snow ethos is collaborating with artists and creatives in our communities. Reaching out to collaborate creatively always makes me feel super vulnerable, so I’m grateful for my skills as an arts educator to help me in this part of the process. Each artist was such a joy to collaborate with, and I value their time and creative energy in putting together this lineup. I want to highlight and showcase these creatives through our design process, to do this with friends and creative (s)heros makes this an extra special collection of work. There were a few parameters I shared with collaborating artists, but mostly all of these artists had work that directly connected to the design needs of boards/skis.
Stay tuned for behind-the-scenes features with the other artists, and follow along in real time on our Substack.
