Dave Snyder is chief creative officer at Firstborn, the shop responsible for web-enabled Adidas NMD sneaker drops and the launch of LeBron James’ 16 King “Court Purple” sneaker at Footlocker.
In this episode of the “Ad Block” podcast, Snyder talks about his lifelong love of skateboarding, from his early days as a rebellious middle-schooler in California and high school skater in Las Vegas to his current role as a skater dad of an 8-year-old with sponsorships. “Skateboarding’s so accepted now, you forget that in the ’90s, my parents hated that I skated,” he says. In fact, the first time he spent his own money buying skate clothes, his parents made him return them.
But as a skater in college, he was unknowingly developing skills that would lead to a career in advertising. “I always loved photography, and of course you want to take photos of your homies,” Snyder says. That led to learning Photoshop and building websites to showcase those pictures. When he landed a job resizing photos (he skateboarded into the interview, naturally), he wrote a script to handle the grunt work so he “had time to actually learn coding and web design.”