Slyde Grom Board Logo Design & Santa Cruz Skateboards

A grom is actually a surf term for a young up and coming surfer of sorts.

So any of those kids you see wandering down super excited to get down to the beach. Lots of energy just always stoked no matter what the conditions are. That's what a Grom is and that's what that board represents, it's a board that you can have fun in just about everything. It doesn't matter what age or skill level you are.

The Creative Inspiration behind The Grom BoardLogo:

As far as the logo is concerned, basically the logo was inspired from when I was a kid and my favorite logo...

I don't know if anybody is into skate and surf culture and remembers the Screaming Hand from Santa Cruz? I would literally spend hours doodling it the hand in my classroom, while I was supposed to be studying or learning. This was when I was 11 or 12,  and even growing up on the tip of South Africa, the influence that Santa Cruz as a brand had on me was incredible.  Because of it I was always dreaming of the California lifestyle.

I would sit there and try and try to draw the screaming hand with my friends, but nobody ever really got it right. Apart from maybe my friend Kyle who's a great artist. Nonetheless, that was the intention behind designing the Grom logo,  the hope that at some point a kid would be in class (hopefully still learning stuff) sitting there trying to sketch "The Grom."  Whether it does or not, I don't know, but that was what was going through my mind, as I was creating it.

Putting Pen To Paper with the Grom Logo:

To capture the logo, I started off just doing sketches and stuff. This is obviously more of an illustrative rendering, but nonetheless it just starts off with a black magic marker.
I like to use black sharpie when I know an image or logo is going to be scanned into illustrator to be turned into a Vector. Not only does the rendering come out a lot cleaner, there is something very clean about a two tone black and white concept. You don't get caught up in the color, but it's more about the lines and the shapes. It's true you can do a lot with just a sharpie and paper.

Check out The Grom Board & her Glory HERE