Dank # 08

Dank is a collaborative effort by graphic designer Jørn Aagaard, assistant editor Aksel Overskott and editor-in-chief Eirik Traavik. The project started in fall 2009, when we were all fed up with reading for exams and began to play with the thought of making a gritty fanzine about skating. We’d all skated for over ten years, and were working in journalism and graphic design on a freelance basis when not studying. We thought it could be a fun project to work on, and figured that the zine would provide an excellent excuse to throw a couple of releaseparties.

There weren’t any magazines dedicated purely to skateboarding in Norway at the time, so we gradually began looking for ways to make Dank into something more than a zine that our immediate group of friends could read while on the toilet. By fall 2010, we knew we wanted to make a proper magazine. As far as skating was concerned, we were inspired by magazines like Grey, King Shit and Soma. We wanted to make a thorough mag with a good lay-out, adequate room for photography and well-written stories, not just blocks of letters serving as pretexts for the pictures. Visually, we looked outside the normal expressions of skateboard journalism, and got inspiration from a wide range of current mags, from Inventory to Purple.

To think outside the box as far as both aesthetics and contents are concerned, has always been the goal for Dank. It is a skateboard mag in its essence, but like the lives of the people involved, it is not exclusively about skateboarding.