Have you ever wondered where the illustrations on your board come from? Like, somebody has to come up with those graphics y’all gonna FUBAR in a matter of two boardslides, right? Some companies, they don’t know their shit, so they’ll just let anyone with a design diploma from the adult education center doodle something – anything – in Adobe Illustrator. Contrarily, other companies, like Polar Skate Co., don’t fuck around. They hire actual artists to work their arty magic on those skateboards, and that really pays off. Take Jacob Ovgren and Tynan Kerr, for instance. Both artists are pretty different in style and theme, sure, but what makes them such a great fit for Polar is a shared intensity. Despite the obvious contrast of the former’s intricate geometrical forms to the latter’s playful and Crumb-esque characters, both artists use “loud colors” and movements that ferociously attack the viewer’s senses. Both artists are, in a weird way, echoing Polar’s own approach to skateboarding: explosive speeds and gravitational forces meet unrestrained creativity, opening skateboarding up to new possibilities (seen this way, the famous Train Bank Spot, or any other DIY spot, is an endless mutation of new forms that simultaneously react to and affect the forces inherent to the act of skateboarding – but that’s another blog post altogether). Here’s the bottom line: creating art – paintings, illustrations, skateboard graphics – is not too different from actually skating, despite the former being a more contemplative exercise, while the latter is of course athletic. Both employ the human brain’s capacity for creativity, and thus it makes sense to include artists in the process of skateboarding. This understanding is one of the defining characteristics of Polar Skateboards, and one of the reasons their boards continue to be fresh season after season. You can buy the new Polar Skate Co. decks both at our web shop and at our store in Frankfurt.
