The first snowboards Josh Crookston ever designed ended up in the hands of two chart-toppers — pop superstar Lady Gaga and the iconic rock band Foo Fighters.
Turns out, Crookston said, Gaga was so enamored with the board created for the Utah stop on her 2017 Joanne World Tour — a bright pink plank with “Joanne” spelled across it — “she posted on her Instagram stories about it and was freaking out.”
Crookston, the design manager for the Utah Jazz, Utah Hockey Club and the Delta Center, has held his graphic design gig at the downtown arena for eight years, and it comes with an ever-so-Utah wrinkle: He cranks out customized snowboards for the biggest events to swing through Salt Lake City.
“It’s just a fun twist in the road,” he said.
Since 2017, Crookston has made nearly 150 custom boards for all kinds of bands and musicians that have visited the Delta Center.
All the boards use the same materials, feature the event’s date and give a nod to the longtime venue, either under the Delta Center banner or its previous name, Vivint Arena. Artists receive boards only for their first visit to the venue.
Better than a toy airplane
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Josh Crookston designs snowboards for artists who perform at the Delta Center, Monday, Sept. 16, 2024.
Mark Powell, the arena’s senior vice president of events, said the idea to create snowboards for guests started when the Delta Center was owned by the Miller family, which developed Miller Motorsports Park, where the Professional Motocross Nationals was held.
“There’s 13 cities nationwide that hold these races,” Powell said, “and each city gets the winning riders a unique gift; it’s supposed to represent the state or the city.”
Miller Sports and Entertainment’s marketing department decided to go with snowboards, something that reflects Utah and its “greatest snow on earth.”
“Then at the arena, there’s always [been] a tradition at every arena to give the artist a gift,” Powell said. “Way back in the day, we gave them a little Delta airplane.”
Those keepsakes, Powell said, would always end up in the trash.
Each one of Crookston’s snowboards, Powell said, is unique and sticks out as a memorable gift with the artist.
(Josh Crookston) A design rendering of the board made by Utah graphic designer Josh Crookston for Lady Gaga.
“Lady Gaga, when she came here last, she was really sick, wasn’t seeing anybody, went straight to her dressing room, and they took her snowboard in to her,” Powell said. The board was posted on Instagram before the show even started.
Members of Foo Fighters, Powell said, were “running around the hall” in 2017 and showing their board — a gray base with the band’s initials in gold.
The person Delta Center officials work with to book UFC events has a board leaning behind her desk during Zoom calls. Kylie Hunsaker, the arena’s marketing director, remembers Gabriel Iglesias making a joke about his board on stage during his comedy show.
Crispy bacon and inside jokes
Crookston’s creative process always starts with research.
“I want to look at what their tour art looks like. If their tour art’s really cool, we’ll probably choose that,” he said. “If there’s something really cool in their personal life, if they’re really interested in something, or if they have a cause. We’ll look at their merchandise. If they’re a comedian, we might make stickers with all their jokes.”
After that, using software like Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, Crookston will design a couple of different options and send them over to a team at the arena to pick one. The time to craft the board depends on the intricacy of the design the team chooses.
On every board, Crookston’s attention to detail is apparent. On a 2019 board for the Backstreet Boys, a closer look reveals new details, like the titles of the group’s beloved songs.
For the board gifted to pop artist Shawn Mendes during the Salt Lake City stop on his tour in 2019, Crookston created a board inspired by Mendes’ tour art, depicting red, white and pink flowers.
During a two-night run in Utah’s capital, comedian Jim Gaffigan got a board with a design featuring layers of crispy bacon.
“He used that,” Crookston said, “as basically an advertisement on social [media] for his second show.”
And when Bad Bunny kicked off his Most Wanted Tour at the Delta Center earlier this year, he received a board with his bunny logo in different colors. Comedian John Mulaney’s board, meanwhile, is full of sticker designs with his inside jokes.
Slash, the guitarist from the rock band Guns N’ Roses, saw the board created for his band and thought he was supposed to sign it. The Delta Center kept that one and gave him a new board.
Post Malone, The Killers get a piece of Utah
Crookston said the hardest board he’s ever worked on was for a Utah favorite: singer, rapper and notable Cottonwood Heights resident Post Malone.
Malone’s 2018 track, “Wow,” features a lyrical shoutout to the Beehive State: “750 Lambo in the Utah Snow (Skrrt).” Crookston said he got a request from the arena team to illustrate that line.
“I had to composite mountains, trees and a sky,” he said, “and then this cliff, the Lamborghini, and then create the snow.”
But Crookston’s favorite board is one created for Ariana Grande.
“She’s very into space and space travel,” Crookston said. “So we had a NASA version, we had a tour art version … we decided on this [design] to kind of focus more on her hair and then stars and just make it really artistic.”
The design features a starry silhouette of Grande, her long ponytail sprawling across the length of the board. Grande’s silhouette features a blue, purple and pink gradient.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Robert Smith of The Cure with his snowboard designed by Josh Crookston, Sunday, June 4, 2023.
Crookston doesn’t often get to see the artist’s reactions when they receive the board, because he’s not there for events (except for that time Hugh Jackman received his board).
Instead, he looks forward to seeing the artists potentially posting about the boards on their social media accounts, like Joe Jonas of the Jonas Brothers did, along with Tom Segura, Josh Groban, J Balvin, Dan and Shay, and Utah-grown band The National Parks.
Crookston’s even made boards for some of his favorite artists, like The Killers.
“My favorite part about doing it is I get to kind of live in other brands’ identities,” he said. “There’s so many brands with these artists that I can kind of play around within and make something that’s really cool … this is my favorite thing to do at work, is create these snowboards.”
