Introducing the Polar Skate Co + Pith® (Deck Book)

Creativity can manifest through many expressions. My interest in drawing, art and graphics coincided with my discovery of the skateboarding world. This is my first memory (at eight years of age) of discovering my identity, what clothes I wore, what music I listened to and especially what skateboard I was riding. This sparked hours of drawing brand logos, designing skate decks and fantasising I had my own skate company.

Fast-forward to 2023, and by chance, I cross paths with Pontus Alv - pro skater, Polar Skate Co. founder and creator who spent the last 14 years building his dream skate company. Pontus achieved what many of us dreamed of as young skaters—creating a playground to express his vision through skateboarding.

Sharing these stories led to an idea…

“One of my messages is: "inspire others to inspire themselves". I think this is the perfect product to encourage kids, designers or artists, so many people to explore their creativity in skateboarding. It's super fun.”

Pontus Alv

Hi everyone. It's nice to be here today with you guys.

Liam Goward

So, should we start at the beginning, or do you want to start with the book?

PA

The Beginning of Life?

LG

The Beginning of Life? Yeah! Well, we were talking about how you first started drawing and creating, so let’s start there. 

PA

Yeah. First of all, I guess I should introduce myself. My name is Pontus Alv, and I am from Sweden. I am the founder/ creator of Polar Skate Co. I also have a shoe company called Last Resort AB with a couple of friends, and I recently started a new truck company called LURPIV with another couple of friends. We are here today to celebrate the Polar Skate Co + Pith Deck Book we created together.

I started drawing as a kid, and I have my grandfather; he was an artist, an engineer, an inventor and so on. He was quite a special character. He always encouraged me and my sister to have creative drawing hours. Drawing was a big part of the day-to-day routine. So, I guess I started drawing in 1985 or around there. My style back then was already drawing from what you feel and just drawing on emotion rather than being a technical drawer. Just drawing from the heart, a free form of expression, so to speak. 

LG

Did your grandfather encourage drawing from what you feel, or was he like here’s paper and materials; just go at it?

PA

He definitely said go at it. He was a painter, so he knew how to paint and draw. He painted portraits, oil paintings, and so on. So, I mean, he gave me little pointers sometimes, like this is how you draw the perspective, etc. But he was always for freeform, draw how you feel. 'cause he was interested in studying drawings from what's happening in your mind and soul. He was very interested in that side of it rather than, you know, a technical perfect drawing.

LG

It’s interesting that your grandfather encouraged that. It is cool to know how to draw technically. But drawing from your soul and your feelings is a very different skill. Is that where your style and point of view stems from?

PA

Yeah. To some extent. I think whether it's photography, filmmaking, drawing, illustration, or any creative output, I think you're trying to search for your style and identity. That takes hours and years of just going at it. And at some point, you feel like that's my vibe. That's the style that I connect with and express my soul or my feelings.

LG

Then, from there, you started skating pretty young. We connected on this when we met because skating was my gateway into my personal expression and eventually into design. When did you start skating? 

PA

I started skating around 1987. That time in skateboarding was based around vert skating—more like the big vert-skating Tony Hawk and the Powell Peralta Bones Brigade team. But it was also the beginning and the birth of street skating. It was the birth of a lot of subcultures, too.

All the skateboard companies that were popping up left and right. With that was a whole creative burst of magazines, hip-hop music, music videos, and MTV, that whole nineties culture was so colourful. So, growing up as a kid in that era was so vivid.

LG 

For me, It must have been 98 or 99 when I started skating. I think it was when I was eight years old. That was my first attachment to my identity. I don't remember what I used to wear before then. You know, as a kid, I didn't think I made any choices, but when I started skating, I was making the choices, and everything was surrounded by that. That led to starting to draw, understanding what graphics and art were and reading magazines for the first time. That was sparked by skateboard culture.

PA

Skateboarding is such an amazing thing. So many people start with skateboarding, but then they discover so many other creative outputs, where you're like, oh, I got into skateboarding, I started filming, I started photography, maybe you’re not the best at actually performing, you know, I mean maybe not the most talented skateboarder, but I can still be a part of the culture because I'm the person filming or the person doing the graphics. I'm the person laying out the zines, and I'm making the cool shirts for everyone. And you know, we are all like a group of creative people. Some people are super-talented skateboarders, and they go on to be sponsored professionals. But skateboarding was kind of like the starting of all that to explode. So many people end up now in high positions in creative jobs, and they're coming from that time in skateboarding where, yeah, I used to skate, but from skateboarding, I got into X, Y, and Z and so on. 

LG

For sure, that's how I got into doing what I'm doing. The very first seed was drawing all the skate brand logos, drawing deck shapes and designing my own decks. Without that seed, I don't think I ever would've gone on to study design.

PA

You would go into a skate shop, you see the deck wall, and obviously, you have that dream that maybe one day you could be a professional skateboarder, could be featured in films, could have your name on a board and if you get the chance to do that, I want the board to look like this, like that. As kids, we used to make our own little fingerboards. We glued paper together and shaped it with the concave, and so on. And then we would make up our own fingerboard company called whatever ‘Planet Jupiter’, I think my friend's company was called. Everyone had little names, and then you were drawing on it. We simulated that you had a skateboard company but on a little homemade fingerboard.

LG

Like you say, there are so many people who discovered their creativity that way. There are so many roots you can go from it. It's such a rich industry and culture on its own. It's got so many legs to it. 

So, when did you start Polar, and what started that? Was it that vision of you wanting to do your own boards? Or did you want to do your own tees? What was the first seed? 

PA

I was a pro skater from basically 1995 to 2015. So, being a rider for other companies and seeing how they would portray you as a person. And sometimes you loved it, sometimes you didn't. Sometimes, they would put you in an ad this way, and you'll be like, oh, that looks sick. And then you start asking yourself why it looks good and doesn't look good when it doesn't. At some point in your life, when you get older, you're thinking, well, I want to do my own thing to show the world how I see it. I started making my own videos. That was the first step: to show how I see skateboarding, how I see the culture and how I want the videos to be portrayed and skateboarding to be portrayed. Based on that, it naturally evolved. I wasn't super excited about what was going on in skateboarding back then. That was 2010. I was like, it's a bit dry. There weren't many skateboard brands coming out of Europe. So it was Palace, which started a year before me. Magenta from France. And then I started, so it was like: let's do the skateboard industry in Europe. No one is doing it. I mean, at the time, yeah, there were older companies, like Blueprint back in the day, Cliché, to mention a few, Deathbox, Flip, and so on. That came from Europe. But there was a while, the European industry was pretty dry and dead. So I was like, yeah, it's time to do my own thing. Also, because I had all the knowledge, I was doing photography, I was doing filmmaking, I was doing layouts for magazines. So I was like, let's just put it all together.

LG

You had all the tools to start it yourself?

PA

Yeah, and launch it, see what happens, and learn by doing. 

LG

Once you start the ball rolling. You just gotta figure it out along the way. 

PA

Same for you, starting a notebook company. You know, you throw everything at it and you're like, okay, let's go at this. And you know, I never knew how to produce t-shirts or prepare print files for boards, vector graphics and Pantone colours. But nowadays with the internet, Google, YouTube, and a little bit of friends and family that will help you out. And you're like, okay, let's just figure it out. 

LG

You learn as you go with it. No one can walk into something like that and have every single bit of it nailed down.

PA

But that's also the fun of it. To make stupid mistakes.

LG

Yeah exactly. So we met last year, and we connected on those stories of being kids and sitting drawing skate decks, making up skate companies and so on. The thought was to marry our two things and make the notebook specifically with all the Polar deck shapes. I remember having this idea over a beer, in Bar Alaska. And being like, yeah, okay, let's do it. We did the first layouts, and then it's pretty much the first version. And it’s something we designed for you to use because you are always drawing new board designs right? 

PA

Yeah, right up until I met you, like the last 2, 3, 4 years, I've been drawing, just doing the shapes and doing the graphics. I call them paper pro models. Then I met you, and you were showing me the notebooks, and they're amazing with the lay flat and the paper, the quality, the hand feel, all those things. Then you say you have this idea with the shapes. And obviously, as a skate brand, I'm quite famous for doing all the special shapes and, yeah, let's put the special shapes on pages and everyone can draw graphics on them.

LG

It’s kind of been a perfect thing to marry what we are doing with Pith and what you are doing with Polar. Seeing you draw your typical Pontus Alv illustrations on the decks is super cool. It's nice to see it come together. 

PA

Thank you. Yeah, I mean, it's an amazing book first of all, and it has amazing skateboard shapes, obviously! No seriously, but it's a really fun project. One of my slogans or messages is ‘inspire others to inspire themselves’. I think this is the perfect sketchbook for kids, designers, artists, and so many people. it's super fun, and it's super cool to be able to provide that to people. 

LG

It's something actually really satisfying, like with the brand new blank book with the simple shapes. I really liked looking through all the specs for all of your decks and seeing all the minor variations; my favourite page in there is the index page, where you can see all the shapes alongside each other, and you can see all the tiny variations in shape and the evolution of design in a way. I loved it before I even drew anything in it! But then, I started drawing in mine yesterday, and I’m like, okay, I want to fill this thing. 

PA

Yeah, it's super, super fun. I’m excited to see where people take it and to see all the drawings that people will hopefully send in and share with us. Maybe we will run some competitions and share everyone's designs on our social.

LG

For me that's the coolest thing since starting Pith. We put a lot of focus into creating these books that function super well for artists, creatives and designers. But what I've found the most rewarding thing is what you get back with people sharing what they're doing in the books. And that's more important than the actual book, you know, it's about the creativity it’s encouraging.

PA

I gotta say that there are so many notebooks and art books out there, and if the paper and the notebook aren't right, it's a big turnoff. It's like having bad pants. It ruins your day. Just the feeling of the paper, the hand touch, and the colour of the paper are super important, this paper naturally gives the drawings a nice base to sit on. And, of course, the open spine and being able to lie flat are very satisfying. But you know, my favourite is the paper pack.

LG

You love that thing! That's one of my favourites. It's so raw and so simple. 

PA

I highly recommend the paper pack, but don't forget to buy the deck book—it's also great!

LG

All right. With that shining endorsement, we'll sign out. Thanks, Pontus.

PA

Thanks, Nailed it. 

www.polarskateco.com