There’s an iconic look to the commercial artwork produced at Hobie in from the late 70s through the early 90s. It’s realistic, yet action-packed and evocative of its era. To this day it gets the heart pumping.
RELATED: Those Ruffian Surfers and the 1953 Surf Ban!
Most of that work was produced by Craig Libuse of Libuse Graphics Etc. out of San Marcos, California, not far from Hobie headquarters. When we recently uncovered a trove of his historically significant artwork, we called up Craig and set up an interview.
In the days before AutoCAD, commercial art was a hand-drawn affair. It was time-consuming to produce with a variety of pencils and felt-tip markers. Craig says the quality was so outstanding because he had free reign to do it right.
“Good; fast; cheap. You can have any two. It was a slow process,” Craig said.
The lifelike look is no coincidence. Craig worked from photos, using a lucigraph to project the image onto a plate for tracing. “I’d draw on vellum from there,” he said. Arguably, there’s a flair that’s absent in modern work. “There’s a look to a hand drawn technical illustration that’s missing in Auto CAD,” he said.
Craig’s work appeared in manuals, on t-shirts, advertisements, and in the Hobie Hotline magazine. It took discipline. “It’s a piece of art. It has to be exact. It’s not to be messed with,” he said.
He was a surfer, owned a Hobie 14, and loved windsurfing. Illustrating watersports was a specialty. “Owning a boat gave me some credibility,” he joked. More likely it was his work ethic. “If the surf was good I was still in the shop working,” he said.
Much of his artwork appeared on blended silkscreens – t-shirts and towels and the like. “Every one was different,” he said.
Craig lived through the beginnings of the current technical era, when computer aided drafting first came into prominence. The hardware was expensive. “My first Apple computer cost $5,000. It was outdated in one year,” he said.
Craig Libuse helped shape the image of the Hobie Cat company. His artwork holds up today.
He went on to work for Sherline, a manufacturer of precision lathes, milling machines and machine-shop accessories. He is active with the Joe Martin Foundation for Exceptional Craftsmanship.
