sundance

Get ready for Quirky, our next original series

Though we’re sad to see Ludo go (the series finale of Ludo Bites America airs tonight at 9P), we’re very excited to announce the premiere of the upcoming Sundance original series Quirky, as well as our series-long partnership with Core77. Ben Kaufman’s company, Quirky, is all about finding great ideas from regular people and turning them into real, marketable products, and Core77 is all about covering the best and latest in design and technology. Throughout the series, we’ll be bringing you stories from designers, inventors and entrepreneurs who’ve either already brought their product from concept to completion or are right in the middle of that process – and all without the help of a company like Ben’s.

Today we bring you the story of Skatecycle, winner of the Core77 Design Award for Transportation. Designed by Alon Karpman of Brooklyn Workshop.

Your amazing photo of the day

Another winning find by Kottke from the annals of the Internet: Katherine Hepburn skateboarding.

Beto Janz’ skateboard skulls

For a guerrilla marketing campaign for a skateboard shop in Curitiba, Brazil, designer Beto Janz merged two popular motifs and cultural symbols by shaping used and broken skateboard decks into skulls and leaving them on the streets surrounding popular skateboard parks in the city. [Via]

Skate Fails

Spanish artists Apparatu and Alex Trochut created a series of comically unusable and distorted skateboards made from ceramic.

Kilian Martin in “A Skate Regeneration”

Brett Novak directed “A Skate Regeneration,” a fantastic video of Kilian Martin displaying some remarkable skateboarding tricks. Novak adds a layer of expressiveness that gives it a more “meaningful” quality.

Longboarding short film

Longboarding: Slide from Benjamin Dowie on Vimeo. Benjamin Dowie created this short film “SLIDE.” It focuses on longboarding, which is a mixture of skateboarding with surfing. I have a longboard myself but I can only do about 1 percent of what these guys can. The idea behind it was to marry some slow motion longboard [...]

Crocheted skateboard at group art show

Skateboarding goes high brow in this art installation by Jonathan Rockford titled “Kickflip to the Darkside” featuring a crocheted skateboard. He will be exhibiting as part of a group show “The Rise of Rad” at the Torrence Art Museum that highlights the varied implications and meanings around skateboarding. This exhibition’s focus is on contemporary art [...]

Skateboard animation

Skateboardanimation from Tilles Singer on Vimeo. Tilles Singer created this brilliant little short film that combines stop-motion with a paper craft aesthetic to produce a wonderful style and effect, which I’m sure will be aped in car commercials attempting to market to a “hip” audience. Singer succinctly explains that this took “a ton of digital [...]

Donny Miller for Vans

If you don’t know Donny Miller, you should. His book, Beautiful People with Beautiful Feelings, is a classic. And the Los Angeles artist continues to make thoughtful work that has great humor. Case in point: his new shoes for Vans, the iconic skate shoe company. Tonight at Fred Segal Donny’s throwing a party. If in [...]

Skateboard pool art

Never Crew, an art collective put their artistic stamp on this pool at Lugano Skatepark located in Lugano, Switzerland. View more behind the scenes photos and video here. [Via]

Human skateboard

Created for a shoe company by PES, this stop motion animated video of a skateboarders riding a “human skateboard” is very pretty sweet, although I can’t help but think how uncomfortable the “skateboard” was during the shoot of it. Also, check out these previous skateboarding-centric entries here. Lastly, here’s a wall shelf made from a [...]

What it looks like to go really fast

Jason Kottke has a great post that compiles a bunch of videos of people and things going exceptionally fast, including BASE jumpers in wingsuits, a French TGV train, and two skateboarders on powder-blue suits, below: Adam Kimmel presents: Claremont HD from adam kimmel on Vimeo. [more at kottke.org.]

No Comply 2009: Sydney’s skateboard exhibition

No Comply, an exhibition of skateboard art from a wide diverse group of artists from around the world was held in Sydney recently. I was particularly struck by Melbourne street artist, RONE’s toothpicked submission:

Nike SB sketches

Nike SB footwear designer James Arizumi shared some of his sketches in an interview with Cool Hunting, which helps convey the evolution of a design of a shoe–this one for professional skateboarder Stefan Janoski. It’s a nice treat and read for any sneakerhead.

Explosive skateboarding

Against the background of UNKLE’s emotive song “Heaven,” directors Spike Jonze and Ty Evans film the Lakai skateboarding team navigating an explosive terrain. The video starts a little slow, but “explodes” around the 1:58 mark. If that didn’t sell you then, let me try this: three words, skateboarding, explosions, and slo-mo. ‘Nuff said. [Via]