ABOUT
Contusion is really just Jaimie Muehlhausen. Contusion is the name applied to freelance work. Jaimie's full time gig is the Creative Director and Brand Manager for Tony Hawk, Inc.
Jaimie began his fascination with art in 1st grade when he wrote that, when he grew up, he wanted to be an artist. It's nice to know what it is that you want to do early on. As a senior in high school, he was named one of twelve recipients of the Young Talent In Oklahoma art scholarships. He was also a talented enough baseball player to land on the pitching staff at Oklahoma State University, which was a Top 5 ranked team in the NCAA. They even went to the finals of the College World Series his sophomore year. However, it became clear that he wasn't going to be the next ace for the Yankees, so he eventually transferred to Phillips University, a small liberal arts school in small town Oklahoma.
His first design job came in 1987 with Airwalk Footwear, then just a fledgeling start-up, which grew quickly to a $250 million company. Airwalk is now a Payless brand, but hey, there was a time when it was the hot shoe company in the world. Jaimie moved on to become the art director of Snowboarder Magazine in somewhere around 1993. The talented staff took over the number three rated magazine in its field and built it into the top rated snowboard magazine in the world. Then, in 2000, the dot com boom was riding high and Jaimie left the magazine world to help build the ambitious, but probably "great idea too soon" Swell.com. Swell was to be an internet surfing hub and store, as well as having sister sites for skateboarding and snowboarding. The staff was basically the cream of the crop of editors, photographers and creatives from the action sports world and excitement was high. The concept was great but it was just too soon for a world with not enough broadband. Swell and Surfline were both nominated for several Webby Awards, even winning the Webby for best sports website. The dot com boom busted and Swell became a glorified catalog company.
As the dot com era sorted itself out, Jaimie got an offer to become brand manager and creative director for Tony Hawk, Inc. Tony's empire was just beginning to blossom, though Tony was already an icon and one of the most famous athletes in the world. Now, with massive licensing deals and endorsements for everything from clothing and footwear to bicycles, toys, video games, and, yes, skateboards, the Tony Hawk brand approaches the half billion dollar a year mark.
Throughout all of the above, Jaimie continues to take on side projects from time to time for such worldwide brands as Slim Jim, Playboy, Honda, Vans, Rossignol, ESPN, Chronicle Books, The Fretboard Journal, and many of the finest guitar builders in the world. And that's a lot of fun.
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