An interview with John Vitale, Creative Director at The Killing Floor Skateboards

A WORK IN SKATEBOARDING INTERVIEW WITH

WHAT DOES SKATEBOARDING MEAN TO YOU? “...FREEDOM...AN ESCAPE...FAMILY...”

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An Interview with

JOHN VITALE

FOUNDER AND CREATIVE DIRECTOR OF THE KILLING FLOOR

By Suziie Wang

John Vitale is the Founder and Creative director of the Killing Floor, a small board company based in Portland, Oregon. Living in one of the most creatively vibrant and weirdest cities in the U.S where people are known for taking action & not just talking about it, it’s no surprise that The Killing Floor has an impressively different graphic portfolio, which has been gaining international attention.

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SUZIIE WANG: What does skateboarding mean to you?

SW: Did you study art/graphic design or are you self taught?

SW: Have you ever done any artwork for any other companies?

JOHN VITALE: I suppose it means a relative amount of freedom from the daily hustle of life. A bit of an escape.

Also, it’s always felt pretty synonymous with family. Skateboarders are sort of a second family.

JV: Other than the aforementioned random classes, basically self taught. My wife, Girlfriend at the time, was studying art in college and I kinda freeloaded off of her graphic design lessons… The rest was just an organic process of problem solving and late night google to achieve what I had in my head that I wanted to see.

JV: No Nothing very major. Small and mostly localized things, mainly for the cause more than anything. I did most of the artwork for the shop product, but didn’t really venture outside of that with any other stuff for brands etc, just did a lot of painting, and a bit of sign making and stuff like that.

SW: What artistic mediums do you work in?

JV: I grew up painting a lot. Mostly abstract stuff. Spent a lot of my non skating free time blowing my money on paints and supplies and just kinda winging it. Experimenting with different methods etc.

SW: What’s your background in art/ graphic design?

JV: Growing up, I was always very interested in making artwork. I used to draw the completes they would have ads for in the old skate mags where there’d be like a whole page of pre built completes you could buy. I perfected a few of them, ha. This was when I was like 8-10ish. I used to re create logos and play with lettering before I knew what I was really even doing. In my late 20’s I took some painting classes in NYC at SVA. That was right before I decided to scrap trying to focus on painting, and start a board brand.

SW: What’s your background in the skateboard industry?

JV: I grew up outside of Atlanta in Athens GA, there was one of the tightest communities and small skate scenes I have ever had the pleasure to be a part of. Still to this day, that’s the skateboard community that had the biggest impact on me personally. I started skating in basically kindergarten, naturally I wasn’t very committed for a few years from that point, but it’s always kinda been in my blood. In 2002 while living in northern Cali, I opened up a shop with a friend, called Ampt (named after our local back in the Athens scene) and I owned and operated that until late 2008 when I moved to NYC brief ly. Prior to owning the shop, I worked for Satori a bit in their beginning years as a small startup wheel co.

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SW: What’s your role at The Killing Floor?

JV: Well, I’m pretty much a one man band. I feel like I might be a bit of a control freak, probably what my wife Jen would tell you, at least with TKF as it’s my baby. I do all the ins and outs of daily functioning of the brand, as well as my distribution, Love Child inc. which I run along with Damon Vorce from Politic.

And I am the TKF Creative director and graphic designer.

SW: What was your motivation to start the company?

JV: I guess I wanted to have an outlet that was 100% my voice and vision to create a visual expression of what I wanted to see in a board brand personally. At the time there wasn’t very much happening in the skate industry that felt inspiring to me, so I probably wanted to do it out of being

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bored with what was out there at the time. There’s been a huge inf lux of “small brands” pretty creative and interesting ones, pop up over recent years, and it has continually made my job harder haha. No, really it keeps me on my toes and motivates me to keep trying to think outside the box as much as possible. I like to try to keep in my mind the idea that TKF is a living and evolving organism.

So things should keep changing and becoming new things. Otherwise I’m just stuck standing still. Running in a gerbil ball with it.

SW: What are your main goals for the company?

JV: Get rich or die tryin! Nah, I just want to hopefully turn some kids onto new stuff, Like if a kid goes into a shop and likes the way the Solar Myth deck looks, so he buys it, and then he goes home and looks up Sun Ra, maybe he will find a new exploration into Jazz or something like that. Hopefully to just open people up to things they might not already be into, all the while making the stuff visually stimulating on its own without necessarily being aware of the concepts that coincide.

SW: What’s the inspiration behind the art direction for The Killing Floor?

JV: It has always had a bit of an underlying musical vibe, there are

many other elements in the mix as well, naturally, but I’m generally finding inspiration in old music, cultural stuff, conspiracies etc.

SW: What are your artistic inf luences outside of skateboarding?

JV: I love 50’s through 70’s abstract expressionism. I’ve always been a huge De Kooning Fan. Dylan’s lyrics always churn up ideas for me. Jen got me into Rauschemberg. I love how he makes total garbage look so intentionally well orchestrated. I really liked Chris Johanson’s Deitch projects installation a lot. That show has always stood out for me. His use of color is wild, like there’s no color scheme whatsoever, just madness. Every color of the rainbow, and he makes it work so well.

SW: What are the ideas for the board graphics based on?

JV: All types of different things. This is kinda where I go back to what I was saying about it constantly evolving.

What the graphics are “based on” will probably change drastically from one season to the next. I always try to have some sort of musical tie in, like a oneoff or something. And I’ve been getting really into working with other artists I am inspired by, doing guest artist stuff.

We just did a board with Chet Childress; his art is rad. Last spring we did a Mat - 6 -

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Obrien board that was really kind of out there with a portrait and quote of Brian Eno. So those collabs have been their own inspiration on my own work I think.

Keeps it interesting for me and brings new perspective to the table. I’m trying to do a guest artist board every season.

Thanks to Gonz for that one…

SW: What’s the process of creating the graphics?

JV: Basically, things have been moving faster and faster lately, more every season, so sometimes I feel like I’ve just finished a season, and it’s time to start the next. I basically try to work with what is around me, I like the seasons to feel a certain vibe of the season that they are a part of, like spring, tends to have a little more color, or vibrancy overall, maybe more outside, good weather vibes.

Where as fall and winter tend to be a bit on the darker side. The process varies from board to board. Some are hours of hand collaging, exacto knives, wine, records, or hand painting… others get handled in just a couple hours on the computer in Photoshop and illustrator.

There‘s no boss giving me deadlines, so I really have to keep a fire under my own ass.

SW: Where do you get all the images that you use from?

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JV: Different places. I used to scour thrift and antique sort of oddity shops for material, old national geos, any weird old printed matter that I can imagine becoming a part to something visually cool. A lot of it comes from online too.

Sometimes, old record sleeves, or whatnot.

IF YOU OWN A SKATEBOARD BRAND, AND YOU AREN’T PUTTING SOME LEVEL OF CREATIVITY OR THOUGHT INTO YOUR GRAPHICS, OR THEIR CONCEPTS, THEN YOU ARE ALREADY BLOWING IT. AS A BOARD BRAND OWNER, OR CREATIVE DIRECTOR, YOU ARE BASICALLY GIVEN THE OPPORTUNITY TO HAVE A SORT OF ONGOING ART SHOW THAT HAS THIS LIVING AND DISPOSABLE SIDE TO IT.

SW: Which have been some of your favourite board series for The Killing Floor and why?

JV: Hmm, I guess I’d have to say, I really liked spring 2014 whole season a lot.

I felt like it really went together like - 9 -

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I envisioned. I like Mark Gutterman’s debut pro graphic a lot. A recent favorite is the new spring 2015 Terrain series. I am pretty happy with how those came together.

SW: Why is having good board graphics important to your vision of The Killing Floor?

JV: I think having good graphics should be important to anyone’s board brand.

That’s part of the reason I even started TKF, because I felt like at the time, way too many household name board brands were cranking out so much generic soul less logo driven shit, that I got to a point where I needed to see something different. If you own a skateboard brand, and you aren’t putting some level of creativity or thought into your graphics, or their concepts, then you are already blowing it. As a board brand owner, or creative director, you are basically given the opportunity to have a sort of ongoing art show that has this living and disposable side to it. It’s actually a pretty amazing opportunity to share ideas with a lot of people on a pretty rapid basis.

SW: What inf luences has being located in Portland, had on your vision for the company?

JV: It’s actually helped me to think outside the box. I’ve always wanted the

brand to feel different than everything else around it, and being in PDX surrounded by a lot of a particular sort of vibe in skating actually helps me to strive to set it apart I think. There are a lot of great brands up here that I’m stoked to be friends with and Portland has always had a huge skateboard community. When I moved here, everyone welcomed both myself and the brand in with big open arms, and that was huge.

SW: What’s it like living in Portland, where do you skate when it rains?

JV: Portland is great. There are a lot of things to skate. It does rain a lot. Luckily there are always a revolving number of indoor things to skate. There are ramps, indoor tf’s… That’s always a good time, There’s lots of good Parking garages too.

Curbs all day! Living here is really good.

On a non-skate note, we have tons of good food, I love food! And we are so close to so much amazing nature to enjoy. I love going camping with my wife, searching for new camp spots is always rad.

SW: What have been some of your all time favourite board graphics in Skateboarding?

JV: That’s a really tough question…

Damn, well I’ve always really liked Evan Hecox’s older chocolate stuff a lot.

Everything Ian Johnson has done for - 12 -

WE has been amazing. The old Thiebaud klansman graphic stands out. I like the simplicity of it on the woodstain background. It was a really shocking graphic to me. I liked a lot of McKee’s older controversial ones. The napping negro was amazing. I liked the shock of them and the fact that they were making a very serious statement but in a really visually playful way. Phil Frost did an old supernaut Tony Cox that I always loved…

Some of the very first Krooked graphics that were really sloppy collage stuff, I remember one was made out of old cigar wrappers and canned yam labels. I loved it, it really broadened my horizons on what a skateboard graphic could be.

Honestly, I could go on and on..

SW: What’s the hardest thing been so far with running the business?

JV: Ha. Everything’s hard. Especially when you have to do all of it.

GET IN TOUCH www.thekillingfloorskateboards.com Instagram: @THEKILLINGFLOOR

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