ONE ran a huge piece on old school company Medium, see excerpts below and read the full thing at ONE
“Medium was very much about rebellion. I was working with the guys at Tribe at the time and Senate was a very rebellious company as well, but I wanted to rebel against Senate. That’s what Medium was. I wanted to create something even more core.”– Shane Coburn
As seen in Daily Bread #12
As seen in Daily Bread.
As seen in Box, November 1997.
I’ve always pictured Shane Coburn’s first wheel company, Medium, as very different from Mindgame, but looking at early Medium ads you can see that they were also about progression and setting yourself apart from the crowd. The younger generations of skaters wearing their Xsjados and talking about the good old days of Mindgame make me grin.
From March 1996 to September 1999, Shane Coburn worked at Tribe Distribution as the brand director of Senate, 976 Launderings, Super Computer Robot, and Color Theory. For those that do not know, the all-mighty Tribe was the umbrella of the Bravo Corporation that handled the aggressive market. Check out this article at Rollerhome by Lawrence Ingraham about Tribe and this promotional film Channel Zero. The giant warehouse and private Tribe skatepark seen at various points throughout gives you an idea of how big rollerblading and the Tribe empire was in 1998.
In addition to his work on Tribe’s other brands, Shane started Medium Urethane and Cloth. In a time when skate videos were starting to move from a mainly punk rock soundtrack to one with a more hiphop feel, Medium came out with videos full of ’70s classic rock and ’80s hair metal; the kind of songs that you hear coming in on the only station you can pick up with bad reception at 3 a.m. while driving across the middle of America. Medium videos boast the first sections of many of your favorite pros like Pat Lennen, Brian Shima, and Dustin Latimer.
14 year old Dustin Latimer in Medium’s first team video, Children of the Night.
As seen in Daily Bread #18.
Medium’s image evolved over the years as they tried to portray themselves as the most rebellious and self-described “worst-behaved team in the industry.” Their advertising and merchandise from late 1997 and on all used red and black as the main colors, and had a dark, almost evil feel to it. Below are scans of Medium ads from 1998-1999 from Daily Bread and Box, their 1998 catalog, and pictures of their 1999 clothing line which I recovered from the web archive of www.mediumdumbass.com. Three of the ads advertise the fourth Medium team video, “Lights, Camera, Smacktion!” which was never released. — Ben Rogers
As seen in Daily Bread, September 1999.
Brian Shima in Daily Bread #28.
As seen in Daily Bread, 1999.
As seen in Daily Bread, 1999.
(+4 rating, 4 votes)
