Skim, design, design, skim — Northwest summertime style meets flatland skim.

Board sports have always played host to avant-garde designers. Since the older design punks bedded with the skateboarding/Thrasher movement in the eighties, design and board sports have forged a symbiotic relationship defined by the interplay of chaos and control within design and sport, respectively.

Skate deck design bled into snowboarding, thanks to Burton, which gave birth to designing surfboards, wakeboards and skis. The ever-rising normalization of board sports granted talented designers with a bevy of outlets for their individual skill-sets. Now, as a new board sport matriculates into the mainstream, a new breed of designer blazes the trail toward a unique aesthetic identity.

Skimboarding has been around for some time, generally playing a subservient role to surfing as a novelty that lay dormant, unactualized. In the early nineties, a company began to dedicate themselves solely to skimboarding. Their early prototypes revolutionized the industry with more maneuverable boards that provided a longer, more steady ride. As the sport progressed, Victoria’s teardrop boards became the status quo. Recently, the paradigm has shifted, all thanks to a local company, DB Skimboards. As their board models have taken over, allowing riders formidable pop and grip, the designs have become increasingly intricate.

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What’s unique about Dashboard’s, er, boards is the foam layer adhering to the wooden plank. The ribbed foam allows the rider better grip by absorbing water and preventing slippage. Since the foam acts as the board’s focal point, the designer has to interact with the foam to produce detailed board art, a feat more involved than designing a skate deck or snowboard.

Although DB still uses the foam style design, the company has maintained their trajectory, constantly redesigning their decks for optimization and letting their designers run wild with experimental designs. By granting considerable artistic license, DB’s skim art has become a bold showcase of Northwest panache and skim-inspired artistry, and their designers have accomplished the alternative designers nirvana: ride by day, design by night, the life of perpetual play and creativity.

Should we all be so lucky.

DB Skimboards | 2519 Pacific Highway E STE B Fife, WA | (253) 214-6520

On your inaugural skimboard run, you will fall. Get up and try again.