This is the first of a few new posts about some of the crazy projects I worked on this year. I feel like I've cut my geek bucket list in half since summer, plenty more on that later.
I'd be surprised if you're reading this and haven't seen either of my animation/poetry collaborations with Mat Lloyd, but you're less likely to know he runs a skateboard company Discipline Skateboards and less likely to know I was a huge fan of skating when I was younger. If you ask yourself how you got to whatever point in your life you are currently at, there's probably a number of factors and they're probably linked by certain people. My initial answer would be music (but more on that in posts later today), but if I think further back then its probably skateboarding. Even though I was never much good it was atleast through the group of people I skated with as a kid that influenced my musical tastes that have stuck fast for the rest of my life.
Skateboard artwork and the associated tshirts, stickers etc was my first real exposure to graphic design that I was aware of, though I was pretty unaware at the time of the processes involved. I was always decent at drawing but when people suggested a career in art I always attributed that to dead guys with gnarly oil paintings in museums. I never cared about 'art' and I didn't know what 'design' was because they don't teach it in school. Nevertheless I kept taking art courses because it was the one subject I could guarantee an A in every year by just doing what came second nature.
When Mat suggested we do a quick skateboard project I jumped at the chance. It was at a really weird time of the year after I graduated university (using 2 Inches as my final project) and was living in Berlin between internships trying to figure out which country I wanted to work in for the next few years. When he told me the title of the series was 'Still Fighting' it definitely struck a nerve and my mind jumped to a different solution than he was probably thinking of. I assume between his lovely new wife and awesome new job with DC that year, then the sentiment for him at that time was that the skate company had been quiet for a while and wanted to come back fighting, but I think my initial reply to him over the phone included this scribble with the line "Its usually ourselves we're fighting, right?"
As you can see from the final board at the top of the post, the design didn't change that much. Mat always lets me do my thing and this is pretty much how I quietly felt at one point this year (although everything definitely worked out for the best). I'm really pleased with how it turned out and its been really well recieved by the kids who skate, and really badly received by kids' mothers, and at the end of the day thats what its all about.