What i learned from Gou Miyagi a Japanese skateboarder

2 comments // Oct 15th, 2008

I try to get my inspiration and new ideas from all kinds of media and people doing all kinds of stuff. One of them is also skateboarding. Now what does a skateboarder and a designer have in common? Well Gou Miyagi is a crazy skateboarder from Japan and he has a lot of things every designer should have so there are a lot of things that we can learn from him.

I know you’ll say that skateboarding doesn’t have anything to do with design, oh but it does. First check out his video.

Pretty neat ha? There are some scenes that would make you stop the video, but if you didn’t do it we can continue now. Each time i see something like this, i try to enjoy it a lot, then i watch it again and try to find things that i can learn. Now from Gou Miyagi as a person, you can learn a lot.

How many times did he fall down? How many of them looked really painful? Yeah the answer is a lot, but at the end, he finished the trick he had imagined. That’s really important for a designer too, each time you get knocked down, you need to learn how to get up and do it again. I know this isn’t written in the video, but it’s there!

He used a variety of elements to use when skateboarding, the pipes to grind, the board itself and him on it. He used those things in a really creative and unique way. He thought outside the box, he went for something others didn’t do or think of and won. And example would be grinding the chain. He fell really hard there, got up, did it again and again until he made it perfect. So the next thing i learned was also to do something other wouldn’t, don’t copy but start with a idea even if it’s “stupid” at the beginning.

The third thing would be fun! Easy thing as being helped from a friend to grind that long rail was a great thing. Try to work in groups, more people that love to work something usually make great things and it’s more fun!