Winner of the G3 Ski Graphic Contest

Look for these skis on the slopes next season!

This is a report from :http://www.genuineguidegear.com/life/blog/daves/and-thats-wrap

This year, G3's Skigraphiks contest drew the most interest ever - nearly 250 entries. If you're somehow not familiar, being on this site and all, the annual competition encourages the public to submit their designs with the winners reproduced on limited-edition G3 skis. Amongst those high stakes, and after choosing four other individual segment winners, G3 this week chose 'Bonsai Landscape’ by Patrik Johansson the 2010/2011 Grand Prize winner. We asked Patrik about his design, which is shown here:

“With the winning design I really wanted to visualize the name of the ski – ZenOxide. So I did some research about old Japanese art pieces and calligraphic work. There are a few elements that are constantly appearing in Japanese Zen Art: bonsai trees, the Zen circle and calligraphic characters. So I decided to take those elements and create a ski design out of it. It’s as simple as that.” G3 head ski tester Oliver Steffen said the graphic dovetailed incredibly well with the design of the ZenOxide ski. “The art Patrik produced best embodied the vision that the G3 staff had for the ZenOxide model/brand. It was pretty amazing to us since the graphic easily satisfied the design brief that we gave our own graphic designers for the 2011-12 ski graphic – sophisticated yet relaxed with a strong and notable design element. Patrik’s design is a natural progression of the best ZenOxide graphics of the past and could easily fit into G3’s ski line.”

For his winning design, Johansson, who lives in Sweden and has spent seasons ski-bumming in Chamonix, Val D’Isere and Val Thorens, takes home a pair of custom ‘Bonsai Landscape’ ZenOxide skis, Onyx alpine-touring bindings, a Speed Pro Tech probe, an Avitech shovel and Alpinist skins. Throughout the SkiGraphiks contest, the four individual segment winners over the winter were chosen by a combination of public votes, along with input from G3 staff and retail partners who would sell the winning limited-edition skis. The Grand Prize winner was chosen by G3 staff. And that's a wrap for Skigraphiks this year, start looking forward to next!