Palace x Oakley x K2
Role: K2 Design Director
Part of the Program.
In mid 2024, the teams at Palace and Oakley approached us at K2 to be part of their collaboration that they were working on. The extended crews of each brand crossover more times than possible to list, so we viewed it as a great opportunity to work with one another and bring an authentic piece to the project.
Locked In.
From a conceptual standpoint - the Palace and Oakley design teams made my job easy with this one. They had this beautiful cloud pattern that tied the rest of the collection together that they knew they wanted to use on the boards. Instantly, this really gave a unique and striking visual. Paired with bold logos that can be seen from across the mountain, it was the perfect foundation to start the snowboard graphic.
Printing Process.
Collaborations can hit the internal teams at tricky times. This one was no different and caught much of the K2 team while they were neck deep in working on the inline season. To help with this and take some of the pressure off the team, I took my director hat off for a bit and got my hands dirty to help with the design, production design, and sampling with our factory.
In a world of digital printing - K2 finds pride and detail in offering full screen printed graphics when we deem it necessary and to add value and depth to our products. Both Palace and Oakley are brands the thrive with their attention to detail, so we knew this would be a unique characteristic that we wanted to bring to the snowboards.
Working directly with our graphic production team as well as our factory and sampling room, we developed a print process for the graphics that was focused around “spot” seperations and layering effects. With a combination of back printing (under the board’s top material) and top printing (top of the board top material) we were able to bring that tangible feel that is lost on many of today’s products, especially in the world of snowboards.
The result is a clean, but tactile approach to the boards that adds that little bit of grit to this digitally made graphic.
The Details.
Palace and Oakley both pride themselves as being authentic players in both of their respective spaces. They strive for quality in a world of fakes and all of their products are directly tied towards who they are as brands. With this in high regard, they approached K2 to bring our expertise of “hardgoods” to make sure that these snowboards were as true to the world of snowboarding as possible. All of the tech, details, and info of the snowboards were in the hands of the K2 crew to bring that authentic touch to the products.
The Final Product.
HUGE thanks to both Palace and Oakley for the involvement on this project. The boards came and went from Palace’s webstore before most could get their hands on them but a select amount can be found on resale accounts throughout the web. For more featured coverage on this project please visit HYPEBEAST. For the full collection and more on Palace - please visit their site HERE.
Additional Contributions:
Board Engineering: Justin Clark | Additional Production Design: Rick Ask
Product Line Management: Megan Stark | Marketing and Brand Direction: Tom Johnson and Jon Roy
Photography: Lev Tanju (Photo). All Photography was provided and is Copyright from Palace Skateboards®