Landyachtz teamed up with legendary skateboard deck shaper and graphic artist Skip Marcotte, AKA Turnco, to showcase his iconic style on our flagship skateboards.
There is a garage in Portland, Oregon filled with skateboard decks, cans of spray paint, and piles of fabric. This is the home of Turnco, where old skateboards are cut and sanded into new shapes and intricately layered with paint. Each board is unique, adorned with a combination of bright colors and abstract patterns reminiscent of 1980s Florida where Chip grew up.
Showcasing Turnco through the lens of Landyachtz meant highlighting the best of both worlds. This meant balancing Turnco's flowing, organic lines and wild, carefree style with the sophisticated composition, balanced colors, and high quality graphic application that Landyachtz is known for.
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There is a story written in the details of Turnco graphics. Each layer of paint represents a moment of artistic exploration. Skip's joyous expression and love of skateboarding is evident in the bold streaks of color and subtle textures that dapple his work. In order to capture the depth of detail and the humanity present in these artworks, we asked Skip to produce a series of works on white vinyl sheets, making it easy for us to light, photograph, and bring into photoshop.
Skip and I met on a video call and we started playing with his designs in Photoshop. He told me that this was the first time seeing his work on a computer. Quickly resizing, rotating, and positioning his artwork on a blank skateboard was an incredibly rewarding and fun experience for us both. We were able to rapidly explore options for composition and color that simply weren't possible via with his traditional methods. The expression of excitement and wonder on Skip's face during this process was the highlight of the project for me. It's deeply rewarding and inspiring to connect with artists and open doors to new possibilities for each other.
We mock up a lot of skateboard graphics. 80% of them are bad. We get the obvious choices out of the way first. Then we start taking risks and breaking rules. It is critical for creatives to be able to make mistakes, to explore flawed concepts, to pursue ideas that aren't fully formed. Our ability to innovate is supported by providing an environment for people to reach our mutual goals by trying things that have never been before. Ultimately, our objective is to create an emotional connection between the product and the customer. We want them to feel like the skateboard is a part of their identity. We do this by using the graphic to amplify the product story. There is a moment in the design of every skateboard when the design finally clicks into place and that feeling emerges.
We created individual Turnco graphics for six of our flagship models, spanning multiple product categories. This ensured that our customers would have a chance to own a Turnco collab graphic regardless of their preferred discipline or style of skating.
On top of making the sickest skateboards with the best graphics, Landyachtz is on a never-ending mission to reduce waste. We are always refining our manufacturing processes to be more sustainable and we support initiatives that repurpose existing products and materials. To celebrate our collaboration with Turnco, we decided to release 50 one-of-a-kind decks in a limited sale through landyachtz.com. We identified and pulled skateboards from our inventory that had minor defects on the nose or tail, making them difficult to sell as new products, but ideal candidates to be chopped, shaped, and painted as they are reimagined by Turnco.
