CASE STUDY

Unlike other extreme sports, such as snowboarding or rock climbing, skateboarding was not a recognised sport with the Royal Air Force. This meant very little support for small skateboarding clubs that had been slowly popping up across RAF stations. Skateboarding received global recognition in its debut at the Summer Olympics in 2020, and a handful of serving skateboard enthusiasts felt it was time the RAF should follow suit. The application was under way, but a little extra help might have helped show how serious they were and to get it over the line. That’s when Sgt Chris Turner called in his old skate pal Tom…

Drawing on Tom’s own personal experience growing up in the armed forces and his lifelong association with skateboard culture, it was an opportunity too good to pass up. So much so in fact, that Tom steamed ahead without any cost involved at all, because every now and then we (creatives) should use our superpowers for good, and securing the recognition the sport needed within the RAF would benefit so many people. As part of a wider proposal document for Chris and his team to present to the board, we developed a new RAF Skateboarding logo that would serve as a versatile badge of honour for individual skate clubs to put their own name to, while representing the movement as a wider community. The logo had to perform in two important ways; professional enough for the board to take the application seriously, but also a genuine reflection of skateboarding culture. We also introduced designs for merchandise to show how the differing worlds of military and skateboarding can come together as one.