An introduction to Namdev Hardisty

I figured it’d be a good idea to introduce myself before I start posting. Eestablish some context, nahmean? Then I realized I didn’t want to write a whole bunch of stuff about myself so I borrowed the questionnaire from Skateboarder’s Tuesday 25 feature and made some minor edits. Hopefully this makes me sound less self-important.—Namdev Hardisty

  1. Go-to-trick: Flatground no-comply.
  2. Warm up spot: Wherever it is that I happen to have a half-hour to push around.
  3.  Current Location: Minneapolis MN.
  4. Place to travel to: NYC, Rhode Island.
  5. Things you do when not skating: I’m a partner in The MVA Studio, a hybrid design/marketing company—we design books, create brands, make illustrations, and work on marketing strategies*; I teach design at Minneapolis College of Art & Design; I write books on visual culture including New Skateboards Graphics.
  6. Video parts of all time: Mike Carroll, Questionable; Marc Johnson, Yeah Right, Fully Flared; Dylan Rieder, Gravis part; and hundreds more.
  7. Music: Gunplay, Unwound, Regulator Watts, Threadbare, Dipset, Converge, Drug Church, Self Defense Family, Abilene
  8. Board Graphic: Rasa Libre “Space Oddity” series by Michael Leon; Per Welinder, Viking Skull street size
  9. Next travel destination: No plans.
  10. Favorite Skateboarder record cover: Unwound Repetition; Hoover The Lurid Traversal of Route 7; Fugazi Red Medicine & In On The Kill Taker; Joy Division Unknown Pleasures; Supersilent 1–3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11; Drug Church Paul Walker
  11. Movie quote: Quint’s monologue in Jaws
  12. Favorite skate photo: Hensley’s ollie on the highway overpass; Natas Kaupas’ original trick tip for the No Comply in Transworld; Gonz sequence of a nose pick 540 shuv-it out at EMB in Thrasher in the 80s
  13. Filming Writing for: Ideas. Objects. Images.—The MVA Studio blog, Early Ambient, Mike Burrill’s Village Psychic site(not live yet); working on a bunch of book proposals
  14. Guilty pleasure: I don’t believe in them. Maybe I should feel guilty about how much I love NWA’s Efil4zaggin but I don’t
  15. Books: William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch; Seth Godin, Linchpin; Jay Baer, Youtility; 37signals, Getting Real; Stieg Larssen, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo; Tom Peters, The Little Big Things, Anthony Robbins, Unleash The Giant Within; Geshe Michael Roche, The Diamond Cutter; Emil Ruder. Typographie: A Manual of Design
  16. Favorite youtube video: Self Defense Family on The Nature of Being Offended; Lungfish, Live in Baltimore, 1998
  17. Movie: Currently, Death Wish, Whoopi Goldberg 80s action-comedies, Die Hard.
  18. Current skate trend: The anti-hammers of Magenta
  19. Partner in crime: My wife and business partner Kim Whaley, my new business partner Zach Keenan, and my daughter
  20. Things you wish you could get for free: airfare, books, records, coffee
  21. Worst/best question to be asked at a demo in class: Worst: Can I do [insert something the student would rather do] instead? / Best: If I do extra work will you look at it?
  22. Beverage: Starbucks grande Pike with 2 tablespoons of unsalted butter and some cinnamon
  23. Pro when you were a kid: Gonz, Steve Rocco, Kris Markovich, Mike Carroll, Danny Way, Natas, Vallely, Ray Barbee
  24. Website (non-skate): Learn Self Defense, Daring Fireball, BlogcastFM
  25. Best trip in recent memory/ever: Walking to the coffee shop this morning with my dog was pretty great. Generated a lot of good ideas.

Yeah, so hello. My plans are to post in a few areas: dope things that are going on and projects related to Permanent’s brands (*Permanent is a client of The MVA and we help with social media stuff as well as marketing strategy).

By J. Namdev Hardisty

J. Namdev Hardisty did what every child of 80's skateboarding and 90's hardcore does- he became a graphic designer, writer and entrepreneur. He’s a partner in The MVA Studio, a hybrid design/marketing agency and teaches at Minneapolis College of Art & Design. In addition to blogging at Permanent, he also writes at the-mva.com/blog and earlyambient.com. Namdev also has some kind of marketing role at Permanent and so he will try to be very transparent in his promotion of Permanent’s brands and riders.