#surfandtype

STORY

What Youth is an Aussie surf publication and blog that I've been following since they first started making shit. I love the aesthetic they have, and it's a direct reflection of the artists, filmers, and surfers that they work with. They generate so much fucking original content it's kind of insane. I check their site pretty much every day and it never disappoints. 

I was texting a friend one day about a playlist that he was making on Spotify. I told him it needed more reggae and he quickly dismissed it. Without thinking I replied to his dismissal by saying, "Damn not what youth enough?" And I guess he thought it was really funny, and now we use the term "what youth" in that sort of context. "You're very what youth" just means that you embody that kind of style and aesthetic that the brand created for themselves. It's probably a good thing, but I can see how some people might think of it as an insult. To each his own.

WORK PROCESS

The What Youth logo has a rhombus shape behind it, so I kind of started with that and laid out the text around it. I wanted to position the type in such a way that it looks like it should be moving clockwise to create a sense of movement that the eye could naturally follow. Once that was laid out, the "+" in the middle was added as I began to see what I was making as a compass. I thought it was a nice little touch, I suppose. It's definitely not necessary, though. The image in the background is of the hot ass model from Dear Suburbia. Apparently she dates Anthony Kiedis from the Chili Peppers. Kind of crazy. Again, I was stuck on the filled and stroked text that Casarro got me hooked on. The texture is the same illustrator process I talked about in the last post, as well as the raster texture in photoshop.

REFERENCES & ATTRIBUTION

Dan Casarro

What Youth

STORY

The phrase came out a funny conversation in the outer banks. A friend of mine teaches surf lessons down there over the summer and they had a program that had a funky rhyme attached to it. I can't remember what it is, but we were freestyling back and forth on different names the program could be called. "Kook to Duke" is just something I randomly blurted out, but I kind of liked it and put it in my back pocket. With all that being said, I was thinking of how long it has taken for me to consider myself just "okay" at surfing. I've been bodyboarding since I was a little grom (I'm 26 now), but only started surfing in my later years of high school when I moved to VA from Hawaii. Ironic, I know, but the closest spot to my house in HI was a boogey spot. Anyways, I've been surfing for roughly eight years and, if I'm being honest with myself, am a super average surfer. Now that I'm somewhat older and have a good chunk of experience under my belt, I'm finally realizing that getting good at surfing takes a shit ton of water time and commitment. Hence the phrase, "going from kook to duke takes time."

WORK PROCESS

Went with the Dan Casarro x Matix clothing sort of style again, combining filled text with stroked text. I always make sure the layout and composition makes sense, and that there's hierarchy and balance. Hopefully your eye travels straight to "kook to duke" 'cause that was the intention haha. The badge outline was added at the last second because of a strange obsession I've been having with patches. I love vintage patches. I think they work really well as tee shirt designs and there's a lot of inspiration you can draw from some of the layouts. The texturing process was done with the roughen tool in illustrator, then with a raster texture in photoshop. I've gotten a good amount of textures from shutterstock and they work pretty well. 

REFERENCES & ATTRIBUTION

Dan Casarro