Jibba Jabba 2025
Logo | Poster | Merchandise
Taking place in downtown Houghton, Michigan, Jibba Jabba is a street-style community snowboarding event where some of the Midwest’s best riders come together under the lights to put on a show and compete for the top spot. After its final event in 2011 and a 10+ year hiatus, Jibba Jabba returned in 2023 with a new era of riders, updated features, and fresh energy. It has been my pleasure to design the event posters and logos for the last two years, with more to come.
With the event falling on Valentine’s weekend, we decided to lean into it and embrace the spirit of the holiday. A classic red, pink, and white color palette was used throughout the logo and poster design, with a stylized heart-shaped container encompassing the logotype. The logo was created to be unique yet simple enough that it could be used anywhere at any size.
The poster is where things really come alive. We wanted to emphasize the street aspect of the event by utilizing grit, grunge, and texture into the design. Freestyle snowboarding doesn’t follow rules, and we wanted the poster to express that through dirty brush strokes, ripped paper, warped typography, and a variety of scattered graphic elements. We didn’t want this to feel polished. We looked to the brick buildings, coarse asphalt, and street signage for inspiration. Colors were chosen to match the logo and Valentine’s theme, while photos from previous years were used to highlight a few of the riders and show off the event.
Jibba Jabba 2024
Logo | Poster
A small assortment of secondary graphics were created that could be used on stickers, merchandise, and other goods to promote the event.
After seeing its re-launch in 2023 and hearing that the event was coming back for a second year, I knew that I had to find a way to get involved. My passion for snowboarding and skills as a designer put me in the perfect position to reach out to the event coordinator, Jenn Reed, to see how I could play a part. I was then brought on to reimagine the style and design direction of the event by creating a new logo and poster that encompassed this new era of Jibba Jabba.
I had a vision for the poster that involved large, chunky letters popping off the page that would be impossible to miss. I found it difficult, however, to find that perfect font. Determined to make it happen, I designed the Jibba Jabba typography from scratch and adapted it to both the poster and logo to tie them together and get the vibe just right.
The 2024 poster design would set the tone for future events, so the aesthetic had to be dialed in. We wanted this design to have more raw energy than the previous year, something that grabs your attention and holds it. The center of the poster features a large, halftone cutout of the 2023 winner Gibby Corcoran grinding the top of a building. This is the same building that sits 30 feet away from the actual competition setup in downtown Houghton. From there we highlighted the event info through various graphic elements such as arrows, torn paper, and strips of tape. We wanted to highlight the location of the event as well so an illustration of the Keweenaw peninsula was added with a blue star marking the town of Houghton.
