Ad Creatives Launch Dedicated Website to Commemorate Love of Skiing

A group of advertising creatives and independent designers who also happen to share a love of powder days and first chairs have formed Colorado’s Favorite Runs, a charitable collective that celebrates their favorite ski runs and places to ride with cool, original art. The community project promotes agency and indie artists, climate awareness and a deserving cause.

“We liked the idea of art that symbolically or metaphorically spoke to the fun names of ski runs so much that we decided to do it as an interagency design project,” explained Norm Shearer, partner and chief creative officer at Cactus. “Then, once we started making posters, we thought we could add to the good of the idea by supporting a local nonprofit partner.”

Through the website coloradosfavoriteruns.org, powder hounds can purchase posters depicting runs such as Whistle Pig (Vail), Devil’s Crotch (Breckenridge) or Outhouse (Winter Park) for $35. After printing costs, the proceeds are split 50/50 between the artist and the charitable partner, Protect Our Winters (POW), a climate advocacy group for the winter sports community. The site will offer a new poster each week. The group’s motto: “Peace. Powder. Print.”

While the enticing names of the slopes served as inspiration, artists weren’t told to follow a particular design aesthetic. Shearer mentioned that several “series” posters featuring illustrations of such things as the Windows of New York or reimagined movie ads were on his radar.

Artists Hailey Simon and Shea Tullos depict The Cat Dancer (Keystone) as a stripper joint that lures tomcats with a vintage neon sign in the form of a shapely feline. Incidentally, it is “Meow Open.” On the Blue Ox poster, Josh Jevons depicts the Vail run (“the Demon of Speed”) as a man-beast on a tarot-type card. A pair of charred matches double for skis on a patch of bright, white snow in The Burn (Breckenridge), a poster designed by Shearer. The Breckenridge slope remains somewhat barren after a fire in the early 1900s. Sarah Berkheimer’s AMF (Aspen) resembles a 1960s psychedelic music poster with the “A” standing for “Adios.”