Who is Joseph Toney?
I first got into art/design in high school and simultaneously had to undergo a couple of knee surgeries, which really allowed me to focus on creating things at a young age. By the time I was leaving high school, I already knew that my end goal was to land a job in the ski industry making artwork for skis. I worked on my local park crew back home in North Carolina from the time I was 16 to about 21. I did this off and on while living in NC and going to college there. In doing that, I was able to have a hand helping design the terrain park and work in the summers painting art and stenciling logos onto the rails. On top of that, I would help design t-shirts, posters and the like used for events at the mountain. I took some time off in that time period to study design in Austria as well as intern and then later work for TGR in Wyoming. From there I went on to finish up school while still doing some freelance work for TGR, Jones Snowboards, and Armada.
What Inspires You?
Most of my artistic inspiration comes from the mountains and the time I spend in them. I prefer to physically see the view I am painting/drawing and when not possible I will try to immerse myself in that location through maps, photos, videos, Google Earth, etc... As a graphic designer, I purposefully try to make my projects have some sort of hand feel or add some sort of physical manipulation to the content. This is usually my preferred method before my workflow becomes fully digital in order to reproduce art as a final graphic.
Armada Skis
I got involved full time with Armada in 2014. I was trying to sell myself to every brand imaginable at SIA while still in college and walked into Armada’s booth without an appointment and without knowing a single person at the brand. With a 60 second elevator pitch and portfolio uploaded onto a friend's iPad, I was able to convince our then Marketing/Team Manager Josh Bishop that I was legit enough to get consideration from our Art Director Mackel Vaughn. It has been a dream come true ever since.
Your Most Recent Ski Graphics?
For our 2018/2019 collection, I created the original art for our Tracer, Trace, Invictus, and Zero lines. My own personal style is seen on the Invictus line and the mural I did for evo Denver, below.Trace has a really cool process behind it that is hard to catch with the naked eye. I took various patterned and solid colored papers to model 3D still-lifes in our photo studio. From there I lit the mini sculptures and worked to photograph them in a compelling way that I could later translate into a final ski design.
