[slickr-flickr tag=”mtdew” type=”slideshow” border=”on” caption=”off” attribution=”Photos by Lauren Byrnes”]
By Quinn Bott, News Staff
Art isn’t just for galleries anymore. Mountain Dew’s Green Label Art campaign has been creating limited edition works of art on bottles and cans since 2007, and last week in Boston, the company announced that this year they’re adding something new.
The soft drink maker, owned by PepsiCo, has been an active supporter of extreme sports, skateboarding in particular. It sponsors star athletes and festivals including their own namesake festival, The Dew Tour, which combines a concert and a skateboarding competition which travel to cities around the country. The Dew Tour made its way to Boston’s TD Garden June 25, where Mountain Dew’s signature professional skateboarder, Paul “P-Rod” Rodriguez, competed and made a special announcement.
He teamed up with renowned skateboard artist and designer, Don Pendleton, to design this year’s limited edition soda can. Pendleton has been designing graphics and art for skater gear companies like Element, Alien Workshop and Etnies for over 12 years. The can Rodriguez and Pendleton designed is one of the featured 16-ounce collectible cans of Mountain Dew that will be sold in limited numbers around the nation.
Rodriguez is a three-time X-Games gold medalist and the son of the stand up comedian and actor of the same name. “Mountain Dew has given these core shops a platform to represent skateboarding in their communities around the country,” he said. “I’m just doing what I love and I’m happy to have the chance to support something I’m passionate about.”
In addition to this announcement, Pendleton and Rodriguez introduced the Green Label Art: Shop Series, a contest that pits 35 designs submitted by selected skateboard shops around the country. The winning design will be featured on nationally distributed Mountain Dew 16-ounce cans in early 2011. Mountain Dew consumers will vote for their favorite of 5 can designs in each of the 6 regions, then the six semifinalists will continue to receive votes until the winner is announced at the last stop of the Dew Tour in Las Vegas come October.
“Each of the regional skateshops are the life blood of the unique skate communities around the country, and we wanted to give them the opportunity to display their different styles and personalities on a wide scale,” said Hudson Sullivan, brand manager for Mountain Dew.
The winning artist and skateshop will each receive $5,000. There are plenty of prizes up for grabs for the runners-up as well, including skateboard decks, shirts and a whole lot of Mountain Dew. Anyone who votes online will have a chance to win prize packages from Mountain Dew and Paul Rodriguez’s other sponsors, including Plan B Skateboards, NikeSB and Markisa, a clothing and accessory company Rodriguez co-founded. The company is also giving money to shops to host parties to promote their cans and celebrate skateboarding.
The can designs varied greatly, incorporating Mountain Dew’s signature color, green, color into graphics with animals, skateboards, and landscapes in unique and psychedelic ways. Artists were given a template containing the required information, asked to keep their graphics family-friendly, and had to incorporate the Mountain Dew logo.
“Mountain Dew has been great,” said Pendleton, a former skateboarder from West Virginia who now works in Dayton, Ohio. “I wouldn’t have taken on this project if I felt they were going to restrict my artwork in any way. In fact, they have placed fewer restraints on me than some of the skate companies I have worked with.”
His design collaboration with Rodriguez, entitled “Living, Breathing Landscape,” features simple green characters that resemble hills and mountains, including a winged hill-shaped creature breathing fire.
