Head Up
Heart First
Love What You Do 

What happens when the dirt meets the road? 
An intersection that we all ride or surf to enjoy this journey. 
Does one venture on this path alone --
Or better do we hit the trail to find others and learn?

Bike or Board was part creative venture and part life lesson. A sketch of a business model that led to the inevitable -- two creatives who walked away in seperate directions for now. A failure in short hind site but hopefully a tall drink of water before one went for a ride in the desert and the other a paddle out in the river.

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  INSPIRATION//MOOD BOARD

  I believe that every person who walks this earth - at one moment or another - wishes to be their own boss. Not because we could do it better or smarter than our current boss. No this is to me a desire of all mankind. This is the spirit that our country was built on. A desire and dream that you hold inside. For some the opportunity to let that dream out never reaches fruition ..................................................................................... And yet for a few who are willing to step off the paved roads of capitalism and onto the dirt roads less taken -- a source of inspiration must fill your belly, your gut. Because the ideas that fill your mind will change on a daily basis. The real test is in your belly. Mainly because your thinking is WRONG but your step, your will to move ahead is all your really have in this life ..................................................................................... We filled our tanks with empty sketchbooks, life experiences and a blind judgement to create a design studio we had dreamed of while riding country roads as kids. ..................................................................................... .....................................................................................

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  WORK // GUT

  We both came from fathers and mothers who worked. Our fathers are both self employed gentlemen with a personality that would not suit the office very well. We shared common back roads growing up but met a few states away from home. Both parties involved rarely stay sitting for long periods of time. ..................................................................................... We worked hard on getting the gut first for this project. The last job for both had been soulless and that absence of purpose I think is what drove us to find a common goal of greatness. AND will continue to drive us towards greatness well beyond this creative venture. ..................................................................................... I found myself doing more work by hand for this project. Taking points of conversation and translating them onto objects I’d collected or saved over the past decade. An old bike helmet, a skateboard from the shed, my Olympia typewriter, an unfinished piece of art, and even more important a trained hand waiting to guide my pen tip to find definition in our words. Searching for the visual lines to fill our purpose. ..................................................................................... .....................................................................................

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  GO WEST // GO EAST

  I guess now being able to look back -- we could have just read a book : Entrepreneur for Dummies. To be honest -- the idea of starting a design studio didn’t sound entrepreneurial. Just the next logical risk in this career of mine. While time management has been a logical concept -- entrepreneur and risk management were brand new terms. ..................................................................................... To me the beauty is you only get one chance at time to fail. In fact in the creative industry we are constantly building or fixing ideas to the point of failure. How much can we put on this logo, this brand, this website, this app before we break it. The other option is how much do we need to fix to get this old idea working again. We build and break and rebuild communication business models -- or vessels as I’ve started to call them. We built and broke Bike//Board -- our first entrepreneurial vessel. ..................................................................................... We put out the basecamp fire, shook hands and walked back into the woods. He headed west and I went east -- I look forward to the next time we meet in the middle. ..................................................................................... .....................................................................................