Subjective: Jake Stoumbos
In this ‘Subjective’ interview we chat with Jake Stoumbos, a portland based artist and designer.
Thanks for being down to chat Jake!
Hey Alex. Thank YOU for being down!
Alright, so I know you grew up in Vancouver WA, tell me about that part of growing up?
Growing up in Vancouver was pretty fun. I have three older brothers, so we always found ways to keep each other entertained. Lots of art, street hockey, trampolines. It was a pretty active household.
I also have 3 older brothers, that’s random. You started skating there, yeah?
Yep. Got my first board when I was ten. It was a pretty instant hook. As a kid, I remember seeing my cousin in some D3s and thinking, “I need to be a part of this” haha. By the end of the summer I had an Andy Mac complete from Costco.
Learning to skate is a pretty special time. I feel like, if you can learn how to skate, you can sort of learn how to do anything. A lot of time spent in that garage as a kid.
Photo on left by Noah Smith / Photo on right by Will Takahashi
Shout out D3’s still inspiring the youth 20 years later haha. So at some point you move away, that’s not always easy as a kid. How was leaving Vancouver?
I left Vancouver when I was 15. Looking back, it was probably a good thing for me. My family moved up north for my dad’s job, about 30 minutes outside Seattle. For the first year at my new high school I didn't have many friends, so I spent a lot of time drawing and skating. I feel like drawing helped me meet some cool people at school, and the kids at the skatepark were way better than me at skating, so that was a big influence. I think being the new kid also helped with my art. I drew a lot in class and learned a ton during that time.
Sounds like you were always kinda doing art? What inspired you to be creative like that at an early age? And what types of art were you drawn to? (pun intended)
Yeah, I’ve always been pretty obsessed with art. My older brothers were great at drawing, so I tried my best to keep up. I feel like most kids love to draw and some people never really grow out of it.
As far as styles go, I was curious about surrealism as a kid, especially MC Escher and Dalí. I loved how you could mix things that don’t usually go together and build your own world. I was also interested in commercial art for some reason. I liked studying logos and making up my own. Once I got into skateboarding, I was ripping ads out of magazines and covering the walls of my bedroom. I think I was trying to soak up as much as I could.
Love it. I vividly remember being hyped on Escher as a kid too haha. I definitely had every wall in my bedroom covered as a youngin as well. So when does Bellingham become your home? I know you spent a good amount of time there?
Yep! I moved up to Bellingham when I was 18 to study design at WWU. I ended up living there about 7 years in total with a few stints of travel in between.
What was it like living, skating, making art, and going to school there?
Living in Bellingham was a lot of fun. It’s a small town and the art scene is pretty vibrant, so it was easy to meet cool people and get involved. My friends threw music events and art nights. It was cool to see people do a lot with a little and do it for their own community. I feel like I’ve been lucky to be around a lot of proactive people making cool things.
As far as skating goes, Bellingham is ok. The streets are crusty and the park is a little crusty too. Even though the spots aren’t the best, I miss skating with the people there. Aidan, Sarah, Jason, Lynn, Levi, Owen and many others. Good people.
As for school, I studied design at WWU. The program was competitive and it pushed me out of my comfort zone. I learned a lot of new tools and it shook up my perspective creatively. I think it was good for me to be forced to try new styles and create things that I probably wouldn't have otherwise.
It’s difficult to sum up 7+ years of Bellingham experience into a single response, but I had a lot of fun.
Yeah for sure. You mentioned traveling, tell us about some of your travel experiences?
My family traveled a lot when I was a kid. We lived in Israel for a year and went to a bunch of other places. Later on as an adult, I went on a handful of solo trips, each one was about three months. While traveling I worked remotely on design/illustration gigs. At the time I wasn't making a ton of money, but it was enough to get by and have fun. I got to visit Barcelona, France, Costa Rica, New York, and California. It was fun to get out of my comfort zone, try new things and meet a wide range of interesting people. A lot of great memories from traveling, and plenty of bumps along the road too haha.
I think it’s easy to romanticize traveling solo and living the “digital nomad” lifestyle, but truthfully, it got a little lonely sometimes. Nowadays, I appreciate a little more routine. I like my bed, I love my partner Emily, I love my cat Reggie. It’s nice to build a life that you enjoy around the folks you love. Don’t get me wrong, traveling is great, but after a few months on the road, it's nice to wake up in your own bed.
Agreed, I feel that. Getting out of my comfort zone, traveling for extended periods and experiencing new things has been super rewarding for me as well, but it’s also equally important to have a home base, community and really be in the rhythm of living somewhere. Throughout your time traveling, and even up in Bellingham, how did your art change and develop?
As far as art, I feel like my interests sort of expand as time goes on. Back before 2014, I used to exclusively draw with a pen and paper. Since then, I studied design and got to learn from working with some really talented people. As both a designer and a skater, I'm often around folks who have completely different skills from my own, and it’s fun to study how people do what they do. I learned how to use digital tools and through experience, my taste has sort of expanded. I still love to draw with a pen and paper, but I also enjoy designing websites and apparel and developing brand systems. I also love simple line drawings.
Recently, I’ve had the opportunity to make art with a handful of skate companies, and that’s been super fun. It feels like it’s been an opportunity to use the skills I’ve learned as a designer and put it toward a culture that I love.
Your work within skateboarding is how I first saw your stuff, as you've worked with several local skate brands and shops I love like Unknown, 35th North, and Genesis. How did you get started doing projects with these shops and brands?
To be honest I just asked if I could help! I’ve been a fan of skateboarding for 20 years and I wanted to get in the mix. I messaged a handful of people who I thought were doing cool things in the industry and I asked if they wanted to work on a project together. From there it was all pretty natural. Just brainstorming ideas and making things that I’d wanna see in skateboarding.
Love that. I still do the same thing with AB haha! You’ve also worked professionally within the branding and marketing industry. How was that experience?
I love it. You get to work on a wide range of projects and create work that’s specifically tailored to each audience. I enjoy the research and puzzle of it all. In the past year, I’ve worked with big brands like REI, but I’ve also worked with small coffee shops and Architecture firms, and publishing companies. Sometimes I’m just designing a shirt, other times we’re creating a whole brand from scratch. I feel like there’s always more to learn and each time it’s a little different. To me, branding and marketing feel like a mix of art and psychology.
Rad. Give me a few of your favorite projects you’ve worked on to date, and let’s talk about ‘em.
One of my favorite projects has been working with Holocene Studio. They’re a film production studio based in LA. When we first started working together, they just wanted me to design a couple T-shirts. The founder Mattias had a really cool vision of what he was looking for and we had good chemistry brainstorming ideas together. Once we were on the same page, he gave me a lot of creative freedom to experiment. The theme for the project was, “try to represent the history of life on earth” — a lot to try and fit into a T-shirt graphic haha. The Holocene team liked the shirts so much that they asked me to do a full rebrand for the film studio.
The Holocene stuff is really good. I remember seeing you post this. Give me another project you’re stoked on?
There are so many to be honest, but all for different reasons. I’ve gotten to work on a few projects with REI. This has been super cool because I’m a big fan of the brand, and it’s interesting to get a glimpse of how a company that large operates on the inside.
A lot of my friends don't know this, but the majority of the creative work that I do involves no illustration. Most of the work at my day job revolves around typography, color, photography, and vector graphics. I don’t share this work as much on my Instagram, but I enjoy laying out type just as much as I enjoy drawing. It’s a fun creative puzzle.
I also take on a lot of one-off freelance gigs. These projects are fun because they're often an opportunity to experiment. Recently I’ve been designing a lot of posters and thumbnails for videos. I’ve noticed that smaller brands are often more willing to push the boundaries.
The list goes on. I’ve illustrated a couple books, designed a bunch of merch, and created graphics for a whole lot of album covers.
Going through this highlight reel perhaps seems a little grand. The day-to-day is sometimes tedious, and there are plenty of challenges, but it’s fun and I really love what I do.
Yes dude, of course, but man some bangers in there! Thinking about the future, what type of projects are you interested in doing?
I want to get more involved with apparel design and marketing. I have a lot of ideas for textile patterns and various soft goods, but I don’t wanna share the ideas online yet because I’m worried someone will steal the idea before I get the chance to make it real.
My dream would be to work with one of the larger shoe brands in the skate industry. A lot of them make great videos and since they have some financial backing, they can support skaters and produce cool work. My work experience sort of straddles the line between “corporate designer” and ”skater art kid“. I feel like it would be rad to put my experience toward a culture that I’ve been studying for the past 20 years. I love skateboarding and I have some ideas that I haven't seen yet. I’m obviously also down to make things with smaller skate brands as well. I just have ambitions to work with some of those larger companies at some point in my life.
Well you’ve got our blessing for sure, happy to co-sign haha! And honestly with you being in Portland and in such close proximity to a few of these big brands (looking at you Nike & Adidas) it would be a no brainer for them to swoop you up. But dude, I feel like I can’t go any further without asking the heavy hitting question, what is curb fruit? A brand? An IG handle? A moniker? A lane to make whatever is on your mind? The people need to know.
Haha to be honest, I was just making some shirts for fun and I wanted to have a name to write on them. I was skating a lot of curbs at the time, so I picked the name “Curb Fruit”. I never had any real intentions of making an “official brand”. Just wanted to make some shirts for my friends. The name was my IG handle for a while, but I recently changed my IG back to “stoombz”. I’ll definitely design more shirts in the future, and I’ll probably write Curb Fruit on some of them. No plans to make it official though. Just a tag to put on random things I make.
It’s got a ring to it. There’s something there for sure if you ever wanted to make a thing, but also kinda nice to just have a creative outlet to just make stuff with no expectations or anything. I guess that’s a good segway to ask how can skaters make a lane doing art of some kind in 2025?
I think the main thing is to just do it! If you have an idea that feels cool to you, try to create the work without judging or second guessing it. It can be tough sometimes, but try and trust your own taste. You never know, someone might really like what you make. For me, the biggest barrier is usually myself. Over the years, I’ve had so many projects that I got 60% complete and then never finished because I started to overthink it all. It’s difficult, but I think it’s important to just see a project through, release it, and move on!
Yeah I agree. I feel the same. It’s like just get it out. I often think of the quote “Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good”. Any other advice for people just getting started in a career doing something creative?
In my experience, one project usually leads to the next. If you’re just getting started and want to collaborate with other people, I think it can be helpful to start within your own community. It’s often a low barrier of entry and you might have more freedom to experiment and try new things. This can be a poster for your friends band, a graphic for the local shop, anything that sounds fun to you. In my experience, these random one-off projects often lead to new work. Someone sees what you made, and if they like it, they might ask you to help out with another project. I believe in people getting paid for their work, but sometimes, the lower paying passion projects lead to the higher paying gigs.
Love it. I think that’s a great place to wrap this thing up. Anything we missed?
I think that should do the trick! Thanks for taking the time to do this. Super stoked on what you’re doing with AB. Happy to be a part of it.
You can follow Jake on Instagram and you can also check out his work on his website www.jakestoumbos.com
