#atfbrief

The final update

So at 10:30 on hand in day, I’m running down to ATF to get my finished board. Its printed so well I can’t even tell thats it screen printed. 

Ken and Joel had made 5 boards in total and were about to start making stickers and t shirts. Which was a really pleasant surprise, however useless as I can’t hand any of it in, but its nice to know they are keen to treat this as more than just a mock brief and like it enough to try it out as an actual board design. 

If only they had made the stuff earlier and I could have handed it in. 

All good though, I fulfilled the brief and are ready to hand in the board. 

Adz

So I did as promised and designed some apparel, to go with the boards and also made some ads.

I just need the board to get printed now. 

So...

After a good chat with A Third Foot aka Ken & Joel, they were very realistic, open and polite about the designs I showed them. We then chatted about skateboarding for a bit and there take on stuff and what they like. It really hel[ed me come up with the board above, which they both like. 

I wanted it to feel like a punk/hardcore album cover feel, but still have a modern board design. The text in this case is done more for aesthetic than the words themselves. Ken suggested that I did an add in the style of the logo, have a photo of Ryan Price (one of their team members) in the square and maybe design a tee to go with it. 

More

More numeral, more patterns and more raw board.

I love the blue one but once again the curve of the nose and tail mean that it’d be too difficult to screen print. 

I like the other design in terms of simplicity, however it lacks something and the colours are a bit hideous. I think that circle can go. I’ll show Ken and Joel see what they think. I might introduce some sort of theme. Who knows? I’m out of control. 

Brand fun

Thought I’d start buy playing around with the Logo. At the top is the current ATF emblem. Just using simple vectors I came with some ideas. The ATF as a logo I did doesn’t really work because it looks like a mountain. That would definitely send the wrong idea about ATF as a uk skateboard company. Scrap that idea.

Research Part 2

Audience

From talking to Ken an Joel the owners and soul operators of ATF, their audience is as simple as British Skateboarders. ATF is the only manufacturer of skateboards in the UK, so really push the grassroots nature of their business.  They distribute to all the core skate shops in the UK and some more occasional global online sales to central Europe, North America and Australia. Age demographics are much broader these days in skateboarding, kids from as young as 3 and 4 upto the terrifying age of 60. However it tends to be somewhere in the middle most of ATFs sales come from (20-35). However even Ken admits he has never really taken an exact sample of the businesses market. Ken and Joel skateboarders and craftsmen, the business almost seems secondary to them.  

I’ve looked at (and owned) prior examples of work by ATF, especially seeing as I started skateboarding when they started ATF. They don’t really have a strict visually identity, willing to take a few risks on style and even guest artists, however in more recent years the roman numeral 3 has become the ‘Brand’ emblem for them.