Month: September 2018

For my header I wanted my it’s image to capture the art of skateboarding as well as fashion. By providing a skateboarder pushing and riding on his board it easily captured the motion of a typical skater. I also added a colorful mural to express the freedom and joy skating brings to people. The reason I also added the mural was to satisfy the concept of fashion in skateboarding. I thought it brought an edge and urban type of style. Fashion in skateboarding tends to be trendy and edgy so I felt like my choices of images were a good combination of that. I also felt like anyone who skates or would like to know more about it would be easily intrigued to explore my website.

I found one of my source images on Flickr. While the other image (the background) was found via Google, which then took me to Flickr. I knew I was allowed to reuse them because I made sure I chose the “noncommercial reuse” option in the settings box before choosing any image. As for Flickr I also made sure it was covered under the creative commons rights.

My production process consisted of taking two images and converting them into one new image. I wanted my final image to look different from how both images first started and to also reflect my website’s theme. In Manovich’s article he talks about image editing and using multiple layers. He describes using multiple layers as a way of changing a designer or illustrator’s feelings about images (Manovich 11). For instance, I felt like both image had potential and were good but I wanted to make them better in my own way. Something that stood out to me was when he explained how a designer “can play with these elements, deleting, creating, importing, and modifying them, until she (designer) is satisfied with the final composition” (Manovich 11). While editing my images on Photoshop, that’s exactly what I did, I deleted things I didn’t want from the original photos, imported the picture onto the other one, and modified everything until I felt like it was ready to be used as my website’s header.

In the Davison article, he describes a bitmap as “a two-dimensional presentation of the bits in a computer’s memory” (Davison 278). He also talks about the simplicity behind single-layer bitmap images, unlike Photoshop’s multi-layer images. The difference between my process was I incorporated many editing features like blur, multi-layer, crop, color enhancement, and so on.  Meanwhile a single-layer bitmap image tends to be less advanced and basic. A single-layer bitmap also doesn’t provide editing features so it’s quite different than Photoshop. An example Davison provided were poor drawn memes consisting of MS paint. These images seemed to use less pixels than my images. For instance, my background image was a high resolution picture. It used more pixels which means it’s sharper and crispier than single-layer bitmap images.

Hiya everyone! This is skate it wear it, a place where you’ll learn everything you need to know about skateboarding and fashion. I started skating roughly about six years ago and at the time there wasn’t a lot female skateboarders to look up to. There also wasn’t any skating apparel for women, which meant it was hard to find skate shoes and apparel in my size. I remember always buying from the boys section and hated the fact there wasn’t any women representation. Skateboarding has mainly been a male dominated sport until now. Over the years skateboarding has progressed by becoming a gender neutral sport, while also making a huge impact in today’s fashion industry. I’m making this site to inform and entertain others skate enthusiasts on the progress skateboarding has made so far.

You may ask yourself why do I want to give a history class on skateboarding and fashion? Well a lot of people tend to not give skateboarding the recognition it deserves. Skateboarding has evolved so much and has opened so many doors to people whether they skate or not. In this site I will essentially take my audience step by step in skateboarding’s accomplishments, such as fashion and breaking the gender norm. I also welcome any kind of comments, feedback, concerns, and questions. This site will be an open minded and respectful site. Like in the words mentioned by legal scholar Lawrence Lessig:

“In the process of learning how to write, we at least learn respect for just how hard this kind of creativity is, and that respect is itself its own value.” (Lessig 2009, p. 157)   

In other words, it’s important to respect other’s ideas and opinions, because after all it isn’t to come with something creative. It’s time to step back and appreciate the work of others. This implies skateboarding’s progress in today’s society, we must continue to learn and grow.

Want to get involved? Awesome! stay tune for the next few posts, there’s so much to come!