board#088: shortboard for Chuck (The Illumina surfboard)

Obed and the gift for his boss

Dimensions: 5'7 x 18 x 2

[completed in March 2015]

model Veloce

The story: Obed works at Illumina (where my day job is). He has seen many of my creations as I have been shaping quite a few boards for my colleagues there. One day I receive an email at work from Obed which was not work-related but work-related at the same time: his boss was retiring and the whole department was going to throw a farewell party very soon. The "soon" was a concern because Obed wanted to offer his boss a surfboard as a farewell present. The timing was extremely tight and I would have said no in normal circumstances. But this board was a decoration board which will represent the company I proudly work for. Despite the very short notice, I accepted the challenge and made it happened (maybe because I am used to tight deadlines and ast-paced environment at Illumina ;))

The shape: Even though the board was not meant to be surfed, I wanted to make sure it would stand proud on the wall with a Mere-made signature shape, the Veloce model, created for speed and performance. This board was shaped with all the attributes of the model.

The artwork: I could not be happier to hear what Obed wished for this board. He sent me high quality files of some Illumina brand logo/artworks which I love. In particular, that beautiful artwork with the genetic code making a... wave!!! What more perfect for a surfboard! I played with the different files on the Boardlams website to print out the full artwork on one big piece of rice paper. 

For the glassing I used my joker card to have it glassed as fast as possible. It was done within 10 days!!! Thank you Global Glassing! The whole team help me to make this happen in time for Chuck's retirement party. However, after all that effort, Chuck had to leave the company earlier than originally planned and the board was not given away during the early retirement party  :( ... It was sent to him later to Boston where he lives now. But I heard he was in total shock when he received his Illumina custom surfboard signed by his ex-whole team...

I created the artwork on the Boardlams website