Designing your own skateboard.  The best practices to make sure your printed graphics come out the best they can.

This is one of the most important aspects to give any deck the finishing touch.  We have seen it all when it comes to skateboard graphics and we know what works best and what simply does not work at all.  There are also things you can do to improve the quality of the design before submitting your artwork to any of the many skateboard manufacturers out there.  

What is the best way to start a skateboard design?

The first thing you can do when deciding on your graphic is figuring out if you want to have a professional graphic artist make it for you or do it yourself.  A graphic artist knows his way around Photoshop and Illustrator in order to save time and give the best quality image for the right product.  If you decide to do it yourself as a DIY project you will have to decide if you want to take the time to learn a graphic design program or just go to a design online site like ours and upload images or use our clip art.  Once you have decided to do it yourself you either already know Photoshop, willing to learn or give it a try.  

How to set up the art for Photoshop?

Set up your document 200 or 300 dpi the length of a skateboard and the width of a skateboard.  Then create your images from scratch or find high resolution images you can import into photoshop.  Make sure they are rolalty free art or not copyright or trademark images.  Make sure you keep all important information away from the edges of the skateboard design template.  Zoom into the areas of the image to make sure it is not pixelated or blurry.   

How to design online with our design studio?

If you don't have Photoshop Or Illustrator you are welcome to use our design online tool to create quality printed skateboards.  In our studio you can upload images pick clip art add text.  The clip art in our studio is vector so it will print clean.  If you decide to upload a image make sure it has the dimensions of how large you want it printed on a skateboard.  So if you find a image on the net and it is 1 inch by 1 inch and then you try to enlarge it in photoshop or our design online tool it will become pixelated.  Never try to use some really small image you find on the net.  It will never print nice.