What drives surfboard design? Is it the pros, the shapers that build boards for the pros? Is it the regular core guy that asks a shaper to make a board a certain way? Or….?

It’s probably all of the above…. To some degree anyway. The pro boards are pretty generic. There is a direction professional surfing seems to move and everything and everyone that follows it stays in that narrow design parameter. Pro riders have there own ideas for what works for them, so boards are made around those ideas.

For instance, when I worked at Hawaiian Blades and shaped boards for Kaipo Jaquias in ’97 he liked a pretty flat board over all. As well, he liked a wider nose on his boards. So we made his boards to his interests. And the boards that went to Japan under the Kaipo model where like his boards. I can’t imagine any of the pros that don’t shape there own boards being any different.

The local board builder may simply follow what is happening around him. See a particular board and make one like it. Surf it and have the guys that ride his boards surf it and get feed back on how it goes. Make changes and develop a board design that way.

Now, as has been said, the field is wide open. Surfboard design has almost no boundaries. And surfers are not adverse at trying deferent things. Because of the interest in trying different things it’s seems board design has moved away from the narrow pro board parameters.

Core shapers get ideas and develop those ideas via the guys that ride their boards, refining what works along the way. As these new and or different designs get noticed interest is built and surfers begin to buy the boards they see the local core guys riding. This isn’t any different than the way pro board designs get developed really.

So… surfboards are designed by surfers, at least the ones that work. It’s an evolving process that circles around the core and pro surfers that want to improve their surfing and explore ways to ride a wave.

D.R.