From talking to Ken an Joel the owners and soul operators of ATF, their audience is as simple as British Skateboarders. ATF is the only manufacturer of skateboards in the UK, so really push the grassroots nature of their business. They distribute to all the core skate shops in the UK and some more occasional global online sales to central Europe, North America and Australia. Age demographics are much broader these days in skateboarding, kids from as young as 3 and 4 upto the terrifying age of 60. However it tends to be somewhere in the middle most of ATFs sales come from (20-35). However even Ken admits he has never really taken an exact sample of the businesses market. Ken and Joel skateboarders and craftsmen, the business almost seems secondary to them.
I’ve looked at (and owned) prior examples of work by ATF, especially seeing as I started skateboarding when they started ATF. They don’t really have a strict visually identity, willing to take a few risks on style and even guest artists, however in more recent years the roman numeral 3 has become the ‘Brand’ emblem for them.
I think with this i’m going to try and create a piece centring around the numeral logo. I might mix in some current trends in skateboard design like un painted viable grain, but mainly aim to create something simple that I think the common garden variety skateboarder would be happy to skate.
