More people likely have the artwork of Jim Phillips (b. 1944) on their skate decks than any other artist. Whenever they write long articles (or short books) on the history of surf/skate/psychedelic/’70s airbrush/underground comic/T-shirt/sticker/gig poster etc. etc. art and design, they always leave Jim Phillips out.
Jim’s work emerged on surfboards in the early ’60s (he was still a kid). As the world shifted gears into the psychedelic era, he was front and center working on everything from hot rod graphics and CARtoons to actually taking on the “art director” gig at The Family Dog productions in San Francisco, doing all their concert posters toward the end. He produced comic strips that ran in alternative underground papers and entire comic books (Christian AND underground). He was doing it all. Yet we never seem to include him in the list of period masters.
His output branched into the commercial word in a serious way in the ’70s when he started doing magazine covers, commercial posters, advertising art, massive amounts of T-shirt artwork (iron-on and otherwise). It’s also when he hooked up with Santa Cruz skateboards. From the mid-’70s until today he’s produced the core styling of virtually every hipster cool skate-punk style that emerged from underground skate culture.
His style kept alive the flavors of Griffin and Roth and Dutch. His homages to those older masters appeared unknowingly on skate decks for several generations of young hipsters, turning them on to the old masters without even realizing it. Jim Phillips may have kept the dream alive for everyone else to “rediscover” those guys. If nothing else, we need to thank him for that alone.
During the punk rock era, he was active on anything skate as well as posters and record covers and T-shirts and logos. He’s one of the very few artists out there to actually survive (and prosper) through each succeeding quantum shift in underground pop culture—surf to beat to hot rod to hippie to arena to glam to punk to thrash to skate and on and on. Still there, still producing, still selling like nothing ever changes. His current work still looks like it was done by a contemporary artist and not an “old skool” dude. He’s as relevant and fresh and influential today as when he started out 50 years ago.
There are too many classic pieces to cite in a tiny essay. There have been books published about his work. To give you a tiny taste of what this guy has done to all of us, I’m showing you one of his iconic “greatest hits.” It’s a sticker/logo/everything for a line of Santa Cruz’s (then) newly invented skateboard wheels, called “speed wheels.” Everybody has seen this over and over to the point that we assume it’s a piece of clip art or something. It’s actually Jim Phillips.
This image has been ripped and copied and stolen so many times that it’s become the virtual “happy face” of underground culture. It’s beyond perfect—it’s iconic.
I think it’s high time that Jim Phillips finally be recognized as the living master he deserves to be seen as. How come we never study these pop culture designers in the “graphic design” textbooks and college classes? Makes no sense. They are such American mavericks.