My first memory with art goes back to 1st grade. The teacher assigned us to draw one of the characters from a book we had. I chose to draw a donkey and when I finished, the teacher saw it and asked “Did you trace this?” I replied with a sincere “No”, she then asked me to draw it again. So I did. From that point on every single one of my report cards had the same note at the bottom of it “Has artistic abilities should considered nurturing that skill” – so my parents did, they allowed me to be myself, to be creative by supporting me with supplies, classes, space, time, patience, encouragement and more.
I took advantage of this and tried to do it all (still trying). I was drawing, sculpting, painting, building, constructing, illustrating, etc. I had a pretty clear idea of what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wanted to be an artist. Imagine having things that easy in life, knowing what you wanted to be at 6 years old. There are people that spend their entire life trying to figure what they want to do. I decided as a kid. Anyone that asked “what do you want to be when you grow up?” got the same answer from me “I want to be an artist”. Sometimes they would reply “what else? what if art doesn’t work out?” I would answer “it’s gonna work, I’m going to be an artist”.
But then skateboarding came in…
I’m not gonna say that I had changed my plan to be an artist and was now invested in becoming a professional skateboarder. No, I skated to have fun (still do). Sure, I would have loved to become a professional skateboarder. But no more so than my previous dream of becoming a NBA player. Or a famous soccer player. I was really invested in my path of becoming an artist, so what skateboarding did for me was, not deviate, but instead guide me to finding my path.
Apart from all the cool tricks, style, skaters, spots, the filming, the music and more, one of my favorite things about skateboarding is the design. I like the graphics of the skateboards and the wheels. The logos of each company. The photography of each brand. The look and feel that makes every single one of them unique. The ads on the magazine. The magazine layout itself. The graphics on the videos. All of it, all of it was fascinating to me (still is). I paid closed attention and soon enough I was replicating it.
Then I started to learn. It is a Graphic Designer that creates and/or sets up the graphics on the boards. The one that creates the logo. The one that lays out the magazine. The one that designs the ad for the product, the t-shirt graphic, the stitching on a hat. Later I learned, the Art Director can guide an entire brand to have a look. A Photographer is always in the mix. A Production Artist makes sure everything will be printed accurately. The more I learned the more invested I was in finding out everything about graphic design. Skateboarding gave me guidance. It led me to decide that I wanted to be a Graphic Designer.
I went to the University Jorge Tadeo Lozano in Bogota, Colombia and graduated in 2008 with a bachelors degree in Graphic Design. Skateboarding gave me guidance, it help me defined what I wanted to do with my life. I’m very happy to exercise the creative side of my brain and even more so to be able to do what I like for a living. Skateboarding is a teacher of life. You fall a lot, but you get back up until you land the trick, because the feeling of landing a trick (accomplishment) is very rewarding. Same is with life, the more you work on your goals and dreams, the closer you are to achieving them. I hope skateboarding can you help you define what you want to do with your life.
