PROJECT skateboards and apparel

We are the Advanced Design 1 Class, Artd 494, a Digital Arts course within the Art Department at the University of Oregon. The artists and designers in this class include Jess Andrews, Liz Bayan, Winter Gibbs, Sean Kesterson, Nick Stokes, Steven Uppinghouse, Peter Yoon., and myself Associate Professor Michael A. Salter. Always seeking to push beyond comfortable definitions of art and design we set out to develop a company. From previous experience I knew the skateboard industry to be one of the most exciting and experimental platforms for design, often acting as the leading edge for much of the visual culture we see today. It is a place where humor and irreverence confront their audience with ease. We spent many hours around a table in discussion over names, tactics and ideas, resulting in the brand PROJECT. This discourse bonded the participants conceptually as they laid down the ground work for the entire research. I charged them to serve themselves as a market. This company name acts as the umbrella for which many individual lines can exist, and it stands for a very open and experimental laboratory for its participants. Each artist and designer in the class carefully developed their own line. Each line was to be a tight and thorough application through both a series of skateboard decks and t-shirts. In all, 7 lines were created for PROJECT.

Throughout the winter term, nearly 10 weeks, the entire PROJECT was developed and delivered. Using a print on demand website called Deckpeck.com we are able to offer all the company's goods in a traditional online retail point. This is a free service provided by Deckpeck. We design, and they allow people to buy the goods directly from them. In addition to this commerce option, and elemental to the development process has been the creation/production of all our designs as actual goods. T-shirts and skateboards have been made available as prototyped, hand built-comps in an exhibition and sale event. The event was carefully studied as a retail experience and installation/environment.

Our commerce website can be found at http://project.deckpeck.com/, and most of the products exhibited at the exhibition/sale are available for purchase.

PROJECT, and its participants, would like to thank the generous support of the University of Oregon Art Department, The Digital Arts Area of the Art Department, Barbara Herring and KungFu Nation, and BambooSk8.