2023 PDGA Membership Discs

In mid-summer of 2022, Vic Allen reached out to me to ask if I’d be interested in taking on the 2023 stamp. On the table were the Membership, Birdie Club, and Ace Club discs. These discs were slated to be stamped on black R2 (MVP’s recycled line) Craves. So with that in mind, you’ve got your black line layer on the flight plate which allows you 3 colors to accent that. It’s a different way of thinking with stamp design but a fun one.

I’d noodle in my sketchbook for about a week or so when Vic came back with an idea to possibly do a collaboration with John Dorn. John has been doing disc golf/ frisbee stamp design for decades. He had recently created the 2021 Relay Turtle stamp that went over really well. I jumped at the opportunity, hit up John Dorn on a phone call to work out the pipeline, and we got to work.

2023 PDGA Membership Disc: Koi Dragon

The Koi Dragon stamp started off as 3 fish swimming aimlessly in a fish bowl. After passing off this thumbnail to John, he added in the dragon and explained the story of how a Koi fish turns into a dragon. I thought this was awesome and definitely gave a jolt to this concept. John passed the concept back and it was my turn to dilute some of the noise and chaos happening and to bring this illustration home into 3 foil form. It took a bit to do that. The dragon was giving me fits. I probably redrew the dragon 2 or 3 times until I was happy with it.

The last edit going into the final phase was adding the important disc golf element. To do that, we came up with the solution to use a basket silhouette within the koi and include chains within the watery mix. I think this design turned out great!

2023 PDGA Birdie Club:

John started off with a super strong line drawing thumbnail for Birdie Club. When we passed off our designs, my first objective was to get this on a black background and start figuring out how this was going to work with foiling. I used gradients to John’s strength. He has a printing background and uses a halftone pattern fill for heavier parts of a design. I thought this could be a great way to blend the stamp into the dark flight plate. I thought that while the visual landscape was interesting; we needed characters navigating the course. That excitement of playing a disc golf course you’ve never played before. This felt very much like a dreamscape to me.

2023 PDGA Ace Club:

This Ace Club design started with a pretty strong photo from the known photographer, Beth Moon. The reference pulls from a dragon’s blood tree from Socotra Island. I love the umbrella-like silhouette and rigid shape of the canopy. It’s from there that I ventured away from the reference and put a more massive trunk like a very old oak tree. A combination of two ideas. John took then took my thumbnail idea and placed the basket and swirling root/ whimsical touch in the foreground section. We moved away from the gigantic mushroom because we didn’t want to show any psilocybin/ drug references as a PDGA offering. The absolute biggest hurdle with this stamp was the clipping area around the tree. Using the black R2 core to help with coverages and getting the correct foil gradients to do that work for us.

I just want to finish this by thanking Vic Allen for giving us the opportunity. It was a rewarding experience working alongside a disc golf design legend, a specific dark core color, and having to think about foil properties early on in the development stages. It helped us solve a lot of those issues before the Rough/ final phase of the artwork was to be addressed. A few stamp tests had to be sent to the PDGA before the final foils were chosen. I want to personally thank Ian Palmer for handling those logistics and collaborating to make sure we have the best foil represented on these. If you have any questions, feel free to ask below! You can actually purchase a Membership disc with your PDGA Membership renewal for $20!

Firm Electron Envy - Special Edition

James Conrad. What a performance!! If you’ve been living under a disc golf rock, here’s the final round of the 2021 PDGA Disc Golf World Championships. That shot propelled MVP and Axiom Discs to run its first custom colorway since the early Axiom Artist Series releases. It’s been a little over a year since that day but I’ve finally told myself I should probably post this before the 2022 World Championships. We wanted to truly honor the win while also acknowledging the sheer interest in the Electron Firm Envy that he threw in from 257 ft to force the playoff with 5x World Champion, Paul McBeth.

This is up there with some of the most prolific design jobs I’ve ever done in the disc golf space. I knew going in that getting and sorting through all the media from that weekend was going to be the task at hand. We had boots on the ground with Team MVP Team Manager and Marketing Director, Andrew Johnson following James and getting some insane footage. We also had PDGA and Gatekeeper Media content at our disposal. It was important for us at MVP to celebrate “The Shot” but to also put the viewer in the exact moment James raised the trophy. He’ll remember that particular moment for the rest of his life. I think the decision to create a replica yellow core, blue rim Electron Firm Envy was decided on just a few days after everything went down. MVP HQ wanted to make sure that was something they could facilitate both with plastic availability and machine time.

I had already made a mental note that most likely that was probably going to happen and started tinkering on editing the stock stamp created by Zachary Kelbaugh with some tasteful and clean Worlds win text. I wanted the stock Axiom Electron putter stamp to remain as much as possible while facilitating the celebration. While in the quick and dirty thumbnail phase, my gut said something had to go. The tightly wound audio waveforms representing the plastic firmness around the outside were extracted. I began working on a few inking pieces based closely on references of James that I paused from video footage. I’ve watched the shot 100+ times and probably in slow more for a majority of those trying to find particular moments. I remember the amount of pollen floating in the air, the time of day, and the sheer amount of sunlight beaming down on Hole 18 during the final approach. The grandstand, the crowd, the line, and the commitment around that right side tree. All of it. I put as much as possible while keeping it mostly uncluttered.

If you notice from the images I’ve shared below, we almost used the front-facing James shot from the award ceremony. I felt the rawness, the immediacy of the trophy raise near the water carried the energy from that thrilling playoff hole and favored that idea. With that finally decided, I went back and tightened up the Hole 18 grandstand, backhand throw, sunrays, and pollen around the Axiom and Electron Firm logos. This was a fast-paced project but I felt the ability to rush something out in a day or two just wasn’t the greatest idea. We wanted a classic design centered around James’ first PDGA Worlds win and something that acknowledged and represented the absolute insanity of the final round.

The Special Edition Firm Envy is out in the wild. Please be sure to ask your local retailer if they have any left in stock!