Collaboration Exhibition Fashion Graphic Design Illustration Product Screen Print

Santa Cruz Skateboards: From the Beginning Until the End

posted by Amber Weaver April 16, 2019

Racking up an impressive list of over 40 years experience in the industry, Santa Cruz Skateboards has been one of the top industry-leading manufacturers of board sports lifestyle products. Established in 1973, Santa Cruz defined a huge generation with its eye-popping graphics and innovative products that continue to resonate with tastemakers, professional riders and younger generations. Taking the spot as the longest continually running and relevant skateboard brand in the world, Santa Cruz’s iconic graphics and riders paved the way to make skateboarding what it is today.

Their most recent Spring ‘19 menswear collection offers an iconic range of T-Shirts, vests, long sleeve T-Shirts, caps, shirts, jumpers, hoodies, jackets, shorts, trousers and accessories featuring Santa Cruz’s instantly recognisable, legendary designs. Designers include Jim Phillips (Creator of the now infamous Screaming Hand) as well as new young artistic talent such as the UK’s Craig Robson aka Daggers For Teeth (@daggersforteeth).

We were granted access to find a little bit about Craig on how he was inspired by skateboarding culture, the graphic works of Jim Phillips and how he developed his own work.

First Memory of screaming hand?
“Honestly I have no idea when I first encountered the Santa Cruz graphics or the screaming hand, it feels like something that has lived in skateboarding culture forever, like seeing the Mcdonalds M. It was probably sometime around the tony hawk video games era when I first remember getting into skateboard graphics, I was reading Sidewalk magazine, listening to hellcat records “give em the boot” CD’s and playing video games so I think all the imagery began to trickle together around that time. I had a ZERO deck with World industries stickers on it, Independent Trucks and Spitfire wheels so everything was bleeding together back then. As a student, I remember looking at Jim Phillips work during a pop-art module as a 14-year-old, but at that point, I was already skateboarding and spiking up my hair and wearing jeans that had no reason to be that baggy! Full disclosure: I haven’t skateboarded in over a decade!”

What inspires your work?
“Tattoos, punk, hardcore, heavy metal, fast music and slow movies, occult and secret symbolism, loads of artists like Mike Egan, Bonethrower, John Baizley, etc but Charles Burns work really changed how I think about black and being confident with heavy shading.”