Written by Don Pendleton

Skateboard graphics have been written about endlessly for the past ten years, but the skateboard logo is often overlooked. So, it's ironic that in 2011, the skateboard logo has become the skateboard graphic in many ways. But the two aren't the same.

The logo is the powerful icon that represents the company's legacy, while graphic styles tend to ebb and flow. Just as skateboarding has evolved and changed over the decades, the skateboard logo has as well, for better and for worse. Picking out the top 50 logos in skateboarding isn't an easy task. Do you separate the logo from the company and base it on visual appeal? I think that's impossible given the nature of skating. Ultimately, these are logos from companies that built the landscape of skateboarding from the ground up. So you have to take into consideration the impact of the brand as well as the logo it represents. If a logo has personal importance to you, then that's all that matters. My list is only one opinion and forged from jumping into skateboarding in 1984.

The logos you grow up with always mean more to you than the ones that came before or after. I'm not even going to suggest that I can be unbiased about something that means so much to me; but I also like to think that as a skater who has worked within the industry as an artist and a skate rat that grew up in the Midwest, I can separate my love of the activity from my personal feelings about the industry and companies. These are important logos for many reasons. Some are more powerful and meaningful than others but what I'm addressing are icons that have come to represent skateboarding in a lot of ways... succinctly and graphically.

Click the thumbnails above to check out the 50 Greatest Skate Logos.

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