surf-inspired skate brand
Sidewalk Surfer is a product branding project I did for Penny Skateboards new ‘Waterborne Technology’ board during my final year at university. The project takes an illustrative approach to brand image, taking visual inspiration from the 1960s era surfers who first popularised ‘surfing the sidewalk’.
The board is designed for carving on flat surfaces, rather than tricks or vert skating, and has a waterborne adapter to replicate the fluid feeling of surfing a wave. Using a 60s-inspired illustrative approach, the brand embodies a nostalgic throwback to the early days of skateboarding, or ‘Sidewalk Surfing’, when skateboards were used as a fun way to get from A to B.
The core branding centred around the three board colour ways which associated with three fictional locations - Cactus County, Ocean Point and Midnight Valley. These were expanded across a range of touchpoints including stickers, posters, postcards and packaging.
As part of the project I also imagined an associate merch range and played with art direction to visualise what the launch of that might look like. Merch included t-shirts, rugby shirts and branded band-aids which corresponded to the three boards.
