Skateboard Stickers

Mark Munson and Steve Cardwell
Laurence King in association with Harper Design
ISBN: 1856693791
Copyright Date: 2004
Review Date: 2005

Since the eighties, stickers have become indelibly linked with skateboarding. With the rash of books focusing on skateboard graphics, it was inevitable that stickers would soon get the same treatment. Unfortunately, like most of the skateboard books, Skateboard Stickers is disappointing. The fact that it is so uneven is a surprise considering that the authors are involved in the skateboarding and design industry, and had access to one collector’s library of over 15,000 stickers. Given that, yhe selection of stickers presented is especially weak.

Art direction: The layout and design of the book is pretty spotty. Some stickers appear to be actual size, some appear undersized, and some appear to be inexplicably larger than life size. Some stickers are surrounded by a ton of extra white space. Some consistency would be nice, and more efficient use of space would have made room for more stickers.

Production: The quality of the images varies wildly from pristine artwork that looks like it came from the original artwork to badly scanned and poorly photographed stickers with uneven lighting. In some cases this is difficult, especially in foil stickers and some neon colors that must be photographed instead of scanned, but the point is, it can be done. Sometimes borders are preserved and sometimes they disappear. Even considering that some stickers are unavoidably yellowed with age, the overall presentation is sloppy.

Editorial: Stickers are presented with the name of the company and name of the product or rider if it applies. What’s missing is the date that the sticker was produced, even if only approximate. This wouldn’t be such a big deal if they were presented in roughly chronological or other groupings, but they clearly aren’t. Skateboard companies are mixed with the occasional clothing company and shop sticker from all eras from the 70’s on. You might say that the artwork is what is most important, so the extraneous info doesn’t matter. My answer would be that if you are going to go through all effort to spend time collecting them and kill all the trees to print a book about such a lowly subject like skateboard stickers, you should at least follow through with the details.

Editorial: Scattered throughout the book are several stories about stickers that usually take up a couple of pages. For the purposes of the book, most of them would have been better left out completely or at the very least condensed. You may like to watch Mike Vallely skate or listen to his opinions on skating culture, but do you really care what he has to say about stickers? No, you’d probably rather have more space to look at stickers, since that is the purpose of the book. In a book like Disposable, the inclusion of the stories made sense since they were actually, you know, interesting. Another good example of wasted space is the two page piece on how Consolidated gave away stencil designs for the supposedly non-commercial purpose of fighting outside corporate interest in skateboarding. Hey, if it’s got a company logo on it, it’s commercial. And besides, stencils aren’t exactly stickers. Also irritating are the numerous pages wasted on skate shots that don’t really apply except that the ramps and obstacles have stickers on them.

To add insult to injury, near the end of the book the Blind Reaper, World Industries Devil Man, and Spitfire logo all get full page treatments. Hardly great examples of art that deserve such reverence. The book even comes with a sticker on it that says “Free Sticker Designed by Wes Humpston Included Inside.” What a joke. Not only is it a cheap paper sticker, but the design is an almost illegible black and white rendering of the words “Skateboard Sticker Art” with the obligatory Bulldog Art plug. I’m surprised that Wes agreed to be used that way. Certainly, fans of his art aren’t going to be impressed. How the parties involved thought they could pass off that cheap crap as an incentive to buying the book… Technically, I guess it is a sticker. The cover price of Skateboard Stickers is listed at $24.95, but the book is already appearing at discounted prices of around $15, which is still more than it is worth. Let’s hope someone else does it right.

Online action: laurenceking.co.uk
Online action: harpercollins.com