A Sketch That Started as a Private Joke, Not a Logo Jim Phillips drew the clenched hand for years before he gave it a mouth, and long before any company asked him for a logo. By his own account, the gesture traced back to high school, when he filled his book covers and notepads with surf cartoons: a big wave, a goofy …

A Disembodied Hand That Defined a Decade A disembodied hand — five fingers splayed wide, a mouth opened mid-scream across the palm — arrived in skateboarding in 1985 and has never really left. Jim Phillips drew that image for Santa Cruz Skateboards, and the Screaming Hand became one of the most reproduced graphics in …