Santa Cruz is the Californian skate house of 1973 — an NHS brand of the Screaming Hand, with a US manufacturing heritage.

Santa Cruz opens the deck round as the elder — one of skateboarding’s oldest continuously operating brands, the founding brand of NHS, and the home of the Screaming Hand, a graphic as recognisable as any in the sport. Santa Cruz makes skateboard decks, and its answer to a round about deck builders is longevity plus an icon: a brand that has been pressing boards and printing art since 1973. A deck, from the beginning.

Its identity is the oldest name in skating. Santa Cruz’s NHS heritage, its Screaming Hand and its long US manufacturing story are the work it is known for. A deck, from California. The oldest name in skating.

(Honest notes, so the story stays precise. Santa Cruz — at santacruzskateboards.com — makes skateboard decks and completes, with current collections around the Screaming Hand and the classic dot, and constructions such as VX and Everslick. It was founded in 1973 in Santa Cruz, California, as the first brand of NHS, whose name comes from founders Richard Novak, Doug Haut and Jay Shuirman. On where it is made — a theme of this round — NHS carries a long US manufacturing heritage in the Watsonville, California area, but the company does not publish a current country-of-origin statement, so we present the US press as documented heritage rather than a verified claim that every 2026 deck is US-pressed. On ownership, Santa Cruz is a brand of NHS Inc., privately held, with sister brands including Independent, Creature, OJ Wheels and Bronson; the separate Santa Cruz Bicycles was sold in 2015 and should not be confused with it. Its marks — and especially the Screaming Hand, a copyrighted work by the artist Jim Phillips — are IP we describe but do not reproduce, and there is no official brand hex; these tones are an unofficial interpretation. This is design commentary and does not promote any product.)

Santa Cruz lives in a skate red. Click a swatch to copy the hex.

Santa Cruz’s identity is iconic, enduring and made — a red, an ink, a rose, a deep red, and a paper. The palette leans red and rose: a bold register that nods to the classic dot and the loud energy of skate graphics. It signals a heritage house with an instantly known icon. The honest caveat: with no published brand hex, these values are an original, unofficial interpretation, not first-party colours.

The lesson is a red palette signals an iconic, heritage identity. Santa Cruz’s world is an iconic, enduring object. For designers, it is a reminder that a bold red and a soft rose can carry a skate house — the tone of a screenprinted deck. Because these tones can fail as small text, keep type dark and let the colour live in the accents, palette and band. The takeaways: last; own an icon; keep the US heritage honest; and treat any single hex as unofficial.

The register is a heritage serif — classic, bold, made.

Santa Cruz’s identity carries a classic, bold, made spirit — a brand more than fifty years old, not a fashion. A heritage serif captures the mood: established, confident and a little grand, the register of the oldest name in skating. Set in a red palette, the heritage serif feels classic and bold — exactly the personality Santa Cruz carries. It is heritage rather than a logo, mirroring maple ply and screenprint ink. (Santa Cruz’s real wordmark, the dot, and the Screaming Hand are things we describe but do not reproduce, and the exact typeface is not ours to use.) Because it is not ours to use, the honest description is “a heritage-serif spirit,” shown here in a stand-in. The type behaves like the deck: classic, bold and made.

Santa Cruz stands for the oldest name in skating.

Santa Cruz opens the round as the elder. A red palette, a heritage serif and a maple deck make one thing — the oldest name in skating — the whole identity: iconic, enduring and made. The NHS heritage is the differentiator, and the Screaming Hand is the meaning. The point is a house from 1973 that has pressed boards and printed one of skating’s great graphics for over five decades.

Put to work, the identity is a heritage told straight, as design. A maker in this spirit would keep a house alive across generations and let an icon carry it, while being honest that a US manufacturing heritage is not the same as a verified 2026 origin. A reader in this spirit would keep the facts right: it was founded in 1973 as the first NHS brand by Novak, Haut and Shuirman; the Screaming Hand is Jim Phillips’s copyrighted art; and the Watsonville US press is documented heritage, not a blanket present claim. Santa Cruz opens the round’s where-made thread at the US-heritage end and its graphic-is-the-identity thread with the whole round, since the deck graphic — here an artist’s copyrighted work — is the brand. The honest editorial moves are to credit the NHS founders and Jim Phillips, to frame the US making as heritage, and to keep the separate bicycle company distinct. The lesson Santa Cruz teaches is that in skating, a graphic can be the identity — and that the graphic belongs to an artist.

For designers and brand-builders, Santa Cruz opens the deck builders: last — and let an icon carry you, honestly. The lessons: build for longevity; own a graphic that becomes a landmark; credit the artist; keep a manufacturing heritage claim honest; and never reproduce a logo or artwork. It is also a reminder to stay precise: Santa Cruz is the Californian skate house of 1973, an NHS brand of the Screaming Hand, with a US manufacturing heritage — with the palette here an unofficial interpretation. Read that way, Santa Cruz is less a deck than a landmark: the oldest name in the sport, carried by a hand that screams. The lesson for a brand is that an icon and an artist can outlast every trend, and honesty about who drew the icon and where the deck is made keeps the landmark credible. Santa Cruz made the-oldest-name-in-skating the identity — proof that a graphic, drawn by an artist, can be a whole brand.

Keep Santa Cruz’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.