Jim Phillips is an American artist that was born in San Jose in the 1940s. In his teens he began to create surf art before joining Santa Cruz, the skateboard company as an art director in the mid 1970s. Drawing inspiration from surf culture and Ed Roth, Phillips would go on to ‘hand draw’ thousands of skateboard deck, wheel and apparel designs while creating the iconic Santa Cruz logo and Speed Wheels’ Screaming Hand illustration along the way. Phillips basically pioneered skateboarding’s early aesthetic and is a trailblazer because of this.