Lines Converge: Manuel C. Caro’s Prismatic Path
Interview: Andrew Smith
M.Caro Portrait: Jay Watson
Shaping Bay photos and Art Direction: Ed Fladung
Hand drawn type: Beth Fladung
Drift has a new feature up, Andrew Smith interviews Manuel Caro of Mandala Custom Shapes and it’s a barn burner. Amazing read. Mani Caro simply and beautifully illustrates how the dharmic knowledge of handmade surfboards is silently transferred from older generations to new generations of shapers, ensuring that surfing retains its soul and karmic traditions. If you have any interest in surf culture beyond potato chips and competition results, click on over and read Mani’s piece.
When I was up in North County SD over the holidays, Rob70 and I paid a visit to Moonlight where Mani has his shaping room. I was fortunate enough to be able to slip in for a few minutes to take some photos. Unfortunately, Mani was home sick with a cold that day (I think). I was instantly drawn to Mani’s tools, shaping room detritus and wall decorations but the thing that struck me most about the shaping room was his profound collection of hand-foiled fins and template curves. A geometric collected history of surfboard shaping. I felt kinda guilty oogling his curve collection with my camera, like staring at someone else’s girl. But I knew I’d kick myself twenty years from now if I didn’t take the time to at least briefly document what I saw.
Like most Drift features, this article formed like Voltron: Andrew Smith put together the transcendent interview with Mani, Jay Watson took Mani’s portrait, my sister Beth hooked up the hand drawn type, I added my shaping bay photos and hooked the photo editing and art direction and of course the folks at Drift provided the stoke.
Go check it out.
Concept Crafts
Ryan Lovelace of Point Concept Surfboards adds a chapter to the Santa Barbara shaping tradition.
Words: Chris Preston
Photos: Morgan Maassen
Art Direction: Ed Fladung
There’s a huge new feature up on Drift, Chris Preston interviews Ryan Lovelace. Morgan Maassen hook’d all the photos and I laced the Art Direction.
Ryan Lovelace makes beautiful boards, he’s been specializing lately in hull making. His hulls have been making a lot of waves, lately. Chris Preston did an amazing job on the interview, it’s in-depth, entertaining and really gets in to what Ryan is doing, and how different that is. Morgan Maassen’s photos speak for themselves (kid has skillzzzz). And well, me? I just tried to make everyone look their best, like a nice jacket and tie. The pull-quote color blobs are a derivative of Ryan’s shaper mark, that appears on all his boards.
Hey, guess who finally has a new portfolio site?! me! www.edfladung.com.
After much toiling, hand-wringing, design, redesign, coding, nail biting and shear rote image processing I’ve finally managed to launch my proper portfolio site. I’m still kicking the tires, so if you see any visual inconsistencies or weird behaviors, hip me up on the burner. Getting the photography galleries together has been particularly time consuming, so instead of waiting even longer, I’ve decided to post the site and update the photo galleries as they become ready.
This site has been a long time in the making. Sometimes working on your own site is the hardest thing a graphic/web designer can do. I started putting together the underlying structure almost a year ago and through various false starts, several different look-and-feels and many various design/photography freelance gigs I finally put my head to the grindstone and knocked it out. And now that it’s done, I’m ready to redesign it! just kidding.
Thank you to all the peoples that have lent a hand, an eye, some code, or just some good comments or feedback to help me get this thing out the door. Very much appreciated.
I look forward to getting back to a semi-normal posting schedule on Quality Peoples. I know I’ve been neglecting yall, but a brother needs to make some cake, nawmean.
Enjoy!
Recently I had the pleasure of working on the logo and identity for AllTrue, a new brand that combines the action sports lifestyle with heavy philanthropic goals in developing countries. I was putting together a logo exploration pack for my newish portfolio website that will go up any one of these months years now. and well, I thought I’d throw a few of the finalists up on the blog.
My favorite? #3 partly inspired by the now defunct Yale Press logo designed by Paul Rand.
Tlaloc: pre-columbian super retro
jazz the glass retro
A skunkwork project I’m brewing for ATL Surfboards. Hooking them up with some “retro” lams for my new fish with the opaque nuclear green/white tints with sloppy border. with um, Marlin Bacon 101 bamboo twin keel fins. yeeewww!!!
The first lam is Tlaloc, the Aztec god of rain. This guy holds a special place in many peoples’ hearts here in mexicolandia. I asked the homies what I should do for the logo and Tlaloc came up. I thought about it for a while and remembered a photo I came across of a late classic period statue of an “uber-hip” Tlaloc that was recently put on display in Munal in Mexico City. This rendition is so outside of the normal “dancing god” imagery associated with Tlaloc, that I’m not quite sure if people will get it right away.
The second lam: I was trying to get away from your average logo with something that was larger and “hipper”. not sure if I succeeded but I know it’s gonna look dope on the green monster.
One of these days I wanna hook up with Marco and do some art directly on the board. freestyle.
Posted in projects | Tagged Design, surfing |
surfrider’s twitter page
Surfrider put out a call to design their twitter background image. So I laced up my super wicked design ninja boots and hooked them up with something a little more mo’fessional than a repeating background image.
They liked it.
artwork by Ed Fladung
My piece is up on the Kind Lines site. I’m super stoked. Truth be told, Rick Malwitz glassed in the photos and added the blue tint. It’s as much Rick’s effort as mine.
If you don’t know by now Kind Lines is a surfy art auction created by Rick Malwitz to benefit Surf Aid International. All 23 art works are on display at the Quicksilver store in Soho, Manhattan today through Oct.2nd. and the online auction starts tomorrow.
Go bid on my piece or one of the other beautiful artworks. Support the good cause, homie. Spread some chedda.
Something is brewing in the lab of Sir Rick Malwitz of The People’s Republic of Brooklyn.
photos by Ed Fladung
DRIFT | Interview with shaper Marco Ortiz of ATL Surfboards
I have a new post up at Drift Surfing Mag. A while back I got into the shaping room with my good friend Marco to take a first lesson on shaping, snap some photos and get down to brass tacks with this up-and-coming surfboard maker. Marco is fast becoming one of a few choice, quality shapers in Mexico:
Marco Ortiz is a surfer and shaper who lives in Guadalajara, Mexico. He shapes under the name ATL Surfboards and also does contract work for the Mexican surf brand Squalo, shaping performance boards for their team riders.
ATL is swiftly moving into the premier spot for quality shortboards in Mexico, rivaling the quality and attention to detail of shapers in the United States. Ortiz’s working philosophy is simple: iteration, iteration, iteration with side orders of exploration and rider testing/feedback. Every board that comes through the ATL shaping bay is directly traced to a lineage that started out in a rinky dink garage with Marco and friends making their own polyurethane blanks. ATL is a true DIY operation. Through hard work, research and days, months and years spent at the helm of the Skil 100 saw and resin bucket, Ortiz’s shapes are really starting to sing and the locals with ‘Al Merick eyes’ are all starting to turn their heads.
Incidentally, I have asthma and for the first part of the shoot I didn’t have a mask. It took me three days to recover from inhaling foam dust, but I’m really looking forward to getting back into the shaping room again.
photos by Rick Malwitz
I’ve got a new blog post up on Drift Surfing, An Interview with shaper Rick Malwitz:
Rick Malwitz is a Brooklyn, NY based surfer and self-taught shaper, who makes surfboards under his own label. Malwitz’s shapes give nods to classic surfboard shapes but gone are the bright colored tints, inlays, pin lines and racy/classic/deconstructed shredder logos. His surfboards are clean and minimal with muted color ways, wet-sand finishes and graced with a perfectly placed and minimally sized logo that looks like it could have been designed by Alexander Girard, Seymour Chwast or Milton Glaser. Nice Modernists: Rick is your man.
Check the interview here and you can peep Rick’s handy work over at his site Malwitz Surfboards.
photo by Ed Fladung
I’ve got a new blog post over at Drift Surfing, An Interview with Israel Preciado. Israel is a local Sayulita cat who has one of the deepest surfboard quivers I have ever seen. Bonzer check, Rich Pavel Speed Dialer check, custom D.Takayama check, Danny Hess wooden Quad check, Creme log check, Gary Hanel 2+1 Stubbie check, not one but two Rob Machado CI single fin and the list goes on and on. For a kid that grew up riding leftover surfer detritus, this guy is a wealth of surfboard knowledge, safely tucked away in one of Mexico’s premier pockets of shortboard gromness.
Check out the interview here.
After a few months of building anticipation Drift Surfing Mag’s North American Edition is now live. Its format is a hybrid of longer, more in depth features and shorter blog articles. The features are full of eye-poppingly large photos, with in dpeth interviews and extended captions. Joe Conway is the editor and he has assembled an impressive team of contributers:
Perspective(s) in Surfing.
Drift Surfing continues and expands upon the work of a modest British magazine started about five years ago. Now exclusively online, the independent North American Edition is an open venue for shared creative output, focusing on what’s happening both in and out of the water. We seek out the perspectives of innovators, instigators, inventors and icons in hopes of gaining a broader perspective on the continually changing culture surrounding surfing. Drift is by, for and about the artists, filmmakers, shapers, activists, musicians, organizers, appreciators and experts looking for something different in today’s surf media.
If you are reading Drift – you are Drift.
Enjoy.
The first four features are impressive!: Portfolio: Joe Curren – Interviewed and written by everyone’s favorite Brazilian Jair Bartoleto, Art of the Matter – Ryan Tatar talks to Art Brewer about his Bunker Spreckels book, Pop Culture Hangover – Ryan Tatar interviews Al Knost, Substituted Blue – Belinda Peterson-Baggs and Dane Peterson go to Indonesia on an aid supply mission.
Oh and I’m contributing to the blog section with writing, photography and interviews, some with a Mexico-specific slant, others without. My first posts are a short series on road-tripping Mexico: On the Road: Mexico’s West Coast, Part 1 and Part 2. I’ve got a ton of good stuff in the pipes. Good stuff in the makings.
Go take a look at Drift Surfing and compliment the staff on a successful launch!
This just in: Jamie at Pnut Luv just posted a good interview with Drift Editor Jon Conway for her “Surf Friday” Series.
1. Ryan Tatar, 2. Danielle Rubi, 3. Jamie Watson, 4. Ed Fladung | Photo: Giovanna Rouvier
I politely appropriated the above photo from Ryan Tatar. It’s the first photo back from Jair Bartoleto’s SANTOS SURF ART II festival and it features work by Ryan, Danielle, Jamie, myself and a few other artists’ pieces that I don’t recognize. Really awesome presentation job by Jair and Theo. Can’t wait to see more photos from the show. So Cool!
Update: Felipe Siebert of Siebert Woodcraft Surfboards chimes in with his pictures from the show, here. awesome!
These are the two photos of mine featured in the above shot:
“Chrome Waves”
“Sunset Look-Out”
I designed this logo for my good bro Antonio “Birris” Ramirez, who has recently opened up La Escuelita Surf School in Punta Mita, Mexico. I really dig the name and we had fun coming up with the logo. You’ll notice a few photos of mine up on his site. Birri is an excellant surf instructor, his moto is something along the lines of “everyone gets up the first time” and he’s right – young or old Birris really gives his all to get people sliding.
If you’re ever in the Punta Mita / Vallarta area and need some really good surf lessons, and maybe if you’re dad (or mom) who’s in his 60’s wants to learn how to surf as well, cuz like he was missing out on the whole early 60s west-coast surf invasion, cuz like he was a working stiff or something – well, Birris is your man.
For all you folks on the rss feed, just a note to let you know that I’ve redesigned the site a wee bit and and beginning to switch up the format here and there. Take a gander at the new QP minimal/watercolors version.
And for all you iPhone/Touch junkies, QP is now optimized for viewing right in your pocket. give it whirl. The iPod/Touch interface comes from a wordpress plugin called WPTouch. good stuff.
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I’m noticing some slight problems in IE. CSS experts: the header/nav should be fixed vertically but move with the layout horizontally. IE isn’t playing well. If you have any ideas, drop me a comment or email thanks: ed at qualitypeoples.com.
Problems fixed with help from a little birdy, thank you.
