Design 07/18/2008

Board Graphics

So it looks like we’re starting to move towards skateboard type graphics on surfboards, and I’m curious what you guys think.

These are the new Slater/Merricks designed by Emil Kozak, Thomas Campbell designed a graphic for Dane Reynolds, and we’ve already seen what Super Surfboards is doing with their graphics.

I’m having mixed feelings about it. While I think they’re looking pretty cool, and the artwork is great, I definitely feel like it makes the boards look “cheap”. You totally lose the hand-crafted feeling, and it seems to turn the board itself into something that’s not so special.

If you went to a party and 63 other guys had on the same exact dress as you, it makes your dress seem a little less special. So why would it be any different to paddle out at Rincon and have 63 (of the 400 or so) other people are riding the same exact looking board as you? Does that make your $750 board feel less special to you? It seems like it would.

Here’s what it says on the Channel Islands site about the process:

“Recently you may have noticed many of our team riders have been experimenting with graphic art on their surfboards. This is a collaborative project with HP (Hewlett Packard) in which we directly print an art piece (that has been designed for them by one of their favorite artists) on the fiberglass. It is then layed on the board and the glassing process continues like normal. This eliminates the need for big laminates which soak up resin or heavy paints which ad weight. Both Dane Reynolds and Kelly Slater have been working with artists and have come up with some really cool stuff. Cost is $60 per side / allow 8 weeks for production.”

I mean hopefully where this is going is that you will be able to create your own custom graphics and give them an Illustrator file to use. Then your board will feel completely custom, which would be AWESOME! But if it’s just like the skate/snow industry, and all the graphics are mass-produced, I’m not so sure.

So what do you guys think? Do you like it? Would you spend the extra $120? Do you think it kills the “organic” (artistically, not environmentally) feel of a board? Does that matter at all, or do you just care about ripping?

Let me know.

Click-thru for a few more pics

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Tags: almerrick, art, boardgraphics, channelislands, danereynolds, design, slater, supersurfboards