My Definite Final Board

Due to printing stipulations my board is rectangle to accommodate everything on to my board. Otherwise, everything else has remained the same. My hopes for this board is that the text does not get cut off. However, extending the checker pattern to the end of the board will defiantly get the whole print onto the board. The main font, reading "XHALE" is a hair smaller and a little bit taller. The small text and small logo I feel do not draw much attention away from the main font. By far I am satisfied with my design and would not change anything in my mind.

So, I have decided to completely scratch the last concept, it just was not eye catching, and the more I looked at it, the more and more I began to dislike it. So my new idea was a board reading "XHALE" with a very unique way of doing the lettering on the board and I edited it and put it into effect and it looked like this:

Since the main letter of the word and the most emphasized was the letter X, I spelled XHALE out of a bunch of small x's turned and sized in many different unique ways, keeping the colors limited to, blue, purple, and white. I feel as if these colors clashed the most with a black background on the board. Next I wanted to add some design to the ends of the board so it did not look so plain, just being a solid black, so I broke it up a little, using some Photoshop brushes I downloaded. My result from this was something like this:

At this point, I was begging to really like my design. I decided to wright skateboards on the bottom to 1)fill in some empty space and 2)emphasize my logo and word to better explain what the viewer was seeing, if they had not seen the shape or layout of the actual board. The next problem I encountered was it was still somewhat empty on either side of the word "skateboards" knowing this, I designed a small and very simplistic logo to hold some space but not grab the full attention of the viewer so with that being said,I came up with this:  

This I feel is very close,if not my final design. I did however stretch out the two end designs to make the checker design bigger, and to reach the red square that was placed in the template. Everything else remained the same, because I did not want to risk loosing any of my lettering or design when it was printed and transferred to the actual skateboard.

Reign is the word I chose to be on my skateboard. I may either use the font I traced out or go to dafont.com and find a font that is closer to the text I had drawn. I want the text to take up most of the board and have roots coming out of the "I". The dot on the "I" is going to be an actual picture of an eye. With this, a root will be winding down the letter I.

I was thinking about using the chinese symbol for strength for a substitute for the letter "N" but decided against it. As it is seen, the eye has wings and there are roots or branches coming out of  the N and on the other side on the R. I was considering the claws coming out of both sides of the board but felt as if it did not match the main theme of my board.