CLIENT
MARK, for discriminating skaters and collectors, makes limited-edition skateboard decks, hand silk-screened in the USA, on the finest laminated North American maple. MARK decks are not designed for a target audience, except for the ones in our collective heads. Which means they are steeped in art, culture, literature, and film.
BRIEF
The 005^SHAN TAPESTRY was created in honor of Mark Gobble’s daughter, Shanna, who was adopted from China.
APPROACH
Art is cribbed from a 2-by-5-feet Chinese tapestry hanging in the designer’s home. Using only the signature of an ancient Chinese general who wrote the original quote, the deck employs various MARK logos in keeping with the style of Chinese seals, or “chops." The original tapestry is a woven white-on-white pattern, which made for some tricky artwork. Once we re-drew the pattern, it was a matter of figuring out the exact half-tone dot screen to create a density that emulated the spirit of the original.
