SURF EXPO INSPIRATIONS - JAN 2019

INSPIRATION ALERT: We made our way to the Surf Expo yet again on January 12 to visit clients and see what’s happening industry wide. The show felt a little light, but there’s still always inspriation to be found. Here’s a bit of the random that grabbed us between meetings.

Luv this board…

New from Arbor

tasty gold badge under the spray on grip

Loved seeing the Igloo bus in person… so fun!

Some fun details here on the Billabong booth… want those I beams and brick.

Reef had a fun giant lifeguard stand booth

Maui Jims featured large backlit art with their colorful frames with subtle pencil drawn illustrations

Shaka brah… Sanuk always weird, but fun…

Saltwater hippy kicked their booth up a lot with tons of vintage items all around in addition to their old rusty bus that everyone loves.

Met Chelsea, the #girlboss from Sunshine State Goods… and had a great visit.

Nice lifestyle images from the crew at @sunshinestategoods

SURF EXPO JAN 18

Jan 20th we took in the Surf Expo and got a look at a variety of trade show setups.

Interesting use of materials. Shells, pinecones and more

Some cool decor at the O'Neill booth

Resin like wall

Surf Mobile at Vissla

Simple and effective display wall

Love them pipes

Inside the Vissla booth.digging the wall wood vibes here.

More pipeage for United By Blue

the Coolness at Howler bros never ceases.... want this board so bad.

Love the sign

Interesting brushed paint

Life is good, had a nice booth setup any store would want.

Popular daily driver for Saltwater Hippee

Giant inflatable Ape for Sun Bum

Clean laquer and frames.

Toms shoes display

SURF EXPO - JAN 2017

Here's a look at some random inspirations we spotted between client meetings at January's Surf Expo. The show seemed a bit smaller than years past, but there's still always heaps of inspiration around.

Wheat paste graphic application from Herschel

Surf art in progress

Odds and Ends and a nice signature sign for O'neill's collection

Cool industrial table for Stance.

Nice simple wall canvases for Reef. (we really like the backwards R) 

Digging the inset logos for Bote's new Gatorshield Series

Boat always "Stands Apart" from the other SUP brands with a larger than life booth and cool displays and details.

Roark's booth featured images and vibes from their recent trip through Russia.

Digging this tasty rope type for Dark Seas.

Corkcicle had a really nice booth, although they were too busy on the inside to take a decent photo of all the sweet details.

Here's a sample of "Fruit buoys", one of our upcoming releases for Jetty's next season.

Tagless is usually the way to go, but we can make an exception for John's tastefully simple tags for the wovens.

Our friends at Jetty always know how to show off their cool salvage finds

The Hippy Tree booth featured a giant teepee                                                       

Interesting way to attach banner panels.

Fun art for Sanuko

Resin art panels for VIssla

Digging this vintage inspired sign

SURF EXPO - SEPT 2016

Here are some inspirations from around the show floor from the latest Surf Expo. 

Poppy colors and nice finishes

foils and transparency

Cool details

Pizzas are everywhere, even tubes

Boards presented like a gallery

Simple but fun pattern soft SUPs

Always got to pay my friends at Jetty a visit. They always decorate with the coolest salvage materials you want to steal.

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HERE ARE  A FEW TEES WE DREW UP FOR 2017

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Drawing by Jeremy Kennedy

Drawing by Jeremy Kennedy

Design by Jeremy Kennedy

Design by Jeremy Kennedy

Design by Jeremy Kennedy

Design by Jeremy Kennedy

"Eastablished" in thread 

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A dirty tee from Roark

Cool I-beam construction and nice materials. Also digging the painted "Summer" title

Bote flipped the standard SUP booth and mounted boards horizontally, chopped boards in half and even made a few into tables around the booth.

Repurposed boards turned in to tables

Lighted displays was a nice touch

Mini gallery wall

Stumbed upon this rat rod woody

SURF EXPO JAN 2016

We took in the Surf Expo January 16th and met with clients new and old. Here are some things we found interesting between meetings.
(Rollover for descriptions)

Fun, but not cheap Popup Camper reproductions, based on VW buses

Cool signage, that overlaps structure.

Clean and colorful SUPs out of CA.

And we're always a sucker for an good anchor.

That green really "Pops"

Metal signage and a fun little open booth space from OnTheRoad.

View fullsize

Our friends at Jetty always rocking a nice hand crafted booth.

Travis's work pants, covered in resin.

Tasty resin play and sanded finishes from Chris Ruddy

Always love the Howler Bros stuff. Digging this Cptn Mnky too.

Roark Revival booth full of patterns and layered goods.

Classic Jack

Play your own themesong as you ride, thanks to Globe's bluetooth speaker board.

Captain Fins' cool fins and color combos. The DIY booth graphics with cheap engineer prints were fun too.

Exploded electric skateboard from Boosted.

Cool pop-up utility box for a inflatable. Bote and their station wagon made an appearance as well.

We all know it's Brandon Grotesque printed, but it still looks good on a window.

Nice new series from Arbor

SURF EXPO SEPT 2015

Here's a look at the some of the inspirations we found at this Fall's Surf Expo.  It's always a good time seeing old friends and clients and meeting new ones. There were a lot of cool wakeboard graphics this year that did a great job of incorporating materials and various paints and finishes. Definite eye candy and drool worthy printing.

Design reveals materials

Some nice art from Land Yaughtz

Matte black

Cool Finishing

Art by Brian Steely

Cool octo art

Metallic

Nice Illustrations

Spot gloss

Texture

Transparency

Glosses and finishes

Die Cut deck

Simple but cool boat display from Nautique that made it feel like the wake was really right behind it.

Hand Type from Yeti

Hand Type from Yeti

Downsized SUP becomes a skateboard

Bote's new Surf SUP

Behind the scenes of "The Darkroom" shaping experience

Cool military-inspired booth

Cool military-inspired booth

Finish and gloss

Board Graphics

Board Graphics

Moonshine Skateboards by Wake Manufacturer

Nice Wheels

Vintage inspired with hand marketed type

Interesting sunglass cases

A designerly booth

Surfboard pattern

More art from Brian Steely

Nice Wheels from Roark

Roark Helmet

Excited to see our friends at Jetty

SURF EXPO SEPT 2014

We were in a lot of meetings this expo, but here are a few things of interest we found in between.

Cool Details

Art for Auction

Cool Boat

Cool booth

SURF EXPO - SEPT 2013

On September 6th, Daryl-the-intern and I left the office and headed south to the Orange County Convention Center to spend the day at the Bi-annual Surf Expo. It's always a great to see clients, meet new ones and take in ton of inspiration along the way. The September show also includes the wakeboard/waterski stuff so it's cool to see the most bad-ass & expensive wake boats on the planet and drool over the edges of their beautifully-detailed upholstery. There were some cool boards from Byerly, Hyperlite, Liquid Force, Obscura and more. Had a fun time catching up with some old friends at Meyer Boarding Co and got to see their new land paddleboards, which are sweet. While cruising the show floor I spotted a cool new skateboard company called STRGHT that uses a sandblasting technique to hand-carve their boards before hand-painting them. Also spotted a booth for the designery notebooks, called Field Notes. Got to see a cool work-in-progress chalkboard mural on skateboards by artist Joshua Noom. But, the highlight of my day was hanging out with the guys of Iron & Resin who've got a really cool thing going out of Ventura, CA. I love their aesthetic and all the fun hand-made details they put into everything. They even hand-stitched their lookbooks and gave us some stickers/patches/and a rag pouch with screen printed rag. Fun stuff.

Here's a sampling of some of what we saw at the show.

SURF EXPO - JAN 2013

January’s Surf Expo was a blur as we filled our day with meetings with various clients new and old. Here are some inspirations we found along the way.

SURF EXPO SEPT 2010

On Saturday we traveled down to the Surf Expo to see what’s new in he world of surf, skate, wake and see some of our clients and try to meet new ones. It seemed busier than the January show, which could mean good things for the industry. Most if the major brands were in attendance, but some popular favorites weren’t there, like Nixon, Hurley, Dragon, Spy, Electric. (This is likely because of the huge push for the wakeboard/waterski aspect of the show.)

As always there was some cool booth design, but there was a lot of rehashing of last shows shells, and many companies just went with pop-ups and vinyl-wrapped booths this time around. Rip Curl had a HUGE 30ft+ tall graphic wrapping around their booth which you could could see from across the show. There was some custom one of a kind bikes being painted by the lovely Taylor Reeves, some fun boats and random inspirations to be found all around the show floor. Here’s our iPhone sampling:

One of the highlights at the show this time was stopping our client VonZipper’s booth to check out a few of the tees we have coming out soon. There will be a bunch of different colorways of each of these, but you get the idea.