Since the first time someone nailed roller-skate wheels to a plank of wood and decided that it was an acceptable vehicle for transport, skateboards themselves have been innovative works of art. Ever since skateboards began to be mass-produced and sold in stores, creative users have been looking to individualize their planks and wheels to satisfy personal aesthetics as well as make a lasting impression.

             Since Wes Humpston designed the decks for the original Z-Boys of DogTown, setting the standard for keeping your deck as flashy as your moves, many skaters have made a name for themselves, as much with their mind-blowing deck designs as with their ability to carve air with these boards. Wes Humpston recently released Concrete Wave, a book which chronicles the history and evolution of skateboard art.

             Many skaters value skills with graphics on par with vert trick skills, and most skateboard circles count talented artists among their numbers. Skating and art go hand-in-hand, as the same types seem to enjoy both activities.

 In crowds which like to match wits and skills, sketch and cartoon drawing numbers among the favorite topics of competition. Taggers often bring boards along, useful in case of a quick getaway, when venturing out on nighttime excursions to the rail yard or to conquer that overpass bridge, and reuse tagging tools to decorate blank skateboard decks with spray paint and oil-paint markers.

             Most skate companies feature unique proprietary decks and wheels, showcasing their social or political values, sometimes more decorative abstract art, or simply the company logo. Some of these companies have evolved their own fully-functional art departments which branch out into other styles of art as well.

 PUSH Skateboards in Ashville, North Carolina, support their own, in-house, art gallery which goes beyond decorative decks and clothes into all sort of skateboard-inspired designs in various mediums.

 Girl Skateboards supports an entire art department, called the Art Dump, whose members can be spotted driving around Torrance, California, in their mobile design unit, a decorated fork lift equipped with a laptop computer and digital camera which they use to chronicle skateboard art that they can capture flying by, both on skaters’ bodies and beneath their feet, as well as any wall murals or graffiti that they can catch before the city paints over them.

             Some prominent skaters in the industry, including Chris Moore, Steve Caballero, and Alfonzo Rawls, just to name a few, have turned their skills from the launch pad to the sketch pad and have their own series of decks displaying their unique skateboard art.

 If you are particularly passionate about the art that you produce for your decks, there are a number of skateboard artist competitions that you can enter for a chance to see your art featured for a limited edition skateboard deck series, and usually there is some sort of cash prize involved.

 Whether you are a rising talent or just like pretty, shiny things on your skateboard, it is certain that skateboard art takes up a huge part of your viewscreen most of the time.

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Branding is as important in the skate world as it is in music gear or automotive tools. Whenever high-quality personal tools of the trade are brought to the market for sophisticated consumers to lust after, image is the magic ingredient that combines a manufacturer’s name with word-of-mouth endorsements that build the base of any company’s success.

Skateboard riders are a particularly loyal bunch, plastering favored makes on board and bodies alike. There is no end to the free advertisement an equipment manufacturer can expect to get, not only on the boards themselves, but on clothing, shoes, tattoos, stickers scattered at popular urban obstacle courses-and of course graffiti.

The logos plastered to a deck say as much about the personality of the skater as the characteristics of the board. While many noobs follow the endorsement of a celebrity skater in choosing their brand, most follow the picture that matches the self-image and style the skater is striving after.

Skateboard logos have become an art form of identification. The dominant style is grainy and raw, often black and white and tending toward a hand-drawn appearance, like the popular etnies and Darkstar marks, although a growing subgenre uses tight, often psychedelic fonts to match exotic-sounding brands, such as Osiris and Satori, or a neat, clean cut look like Burton or Adio favored by straight-edgers.

The outlaw mentality of skateboard culture is reflected in many logo designs. Others integrate common icons, like the Goth Iron Cross used by Independent and Flip, that connect the skater with various subcultures related to music and general outlook on life. Other logos using the art and script associated with punk, heavy metal, house music and rap are displayed by the fans of those music genres who skate.

The overwhelming tone of skateboard logos reflects an aggressive, “kick-ass” approach to life appropriate to the risk-takers and daredevils using the equipment. Riding a board also takes a good sense of humor to shake off the days bruises, and plenty of brands tend toward the outrageously comical, such as the evil flaming grin of Spitfire, Maple, and World Industries logos, appealing to the wry wit usual among streetwise skateboarding enthusiasts.

Many top skate logo designs, like Black Label, DC Shoe and ZERO, generally tend toward hard edges and sharp corners, much like the urban geography where guerilla athletes play, often with a splatter-paint effect reminiscent of another prime urban pastime: tagging. Still others, like Billabong and QuickSilver, express the surfer-roots of riding a board.

Naturally, a hardcore of purists rage against all this commercialism, claiming with considerable justice that becoming moving billboards for skate equipment firms is as counter to the spirit of independent extreme sport as pimping for Pepsi or McDonalds.

Nevertheless, the trend is to kick such old-school attitudes to the curb. Today and as far as the eye can see, the majority of decks will continue to bear signs of the proud allegiance and fierce loyalty evoked by skateboarding logos among their brands’ fledgling as well as experienced users.

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