Kickin' it

This week we had the honor of having Caoimhe Kelly, an industrial footwear designer take our class and introduce us to the world of footwear design. She is a freelance designer with some very big names under her belt such as Timberland, Clarkes and Next. She shared her knowledge and experience as a designer which was very inspiring and informative as that is the career path i would be heavily interested in doing post college.

She really got us thinking about every aspect of footwear design, breaking down sustainability, trends and every minute detail of a pair of kicks. She fantastically put it in a way that made us ask so many questions about the footwear design world.

During the workshop our task was to go out to local footwear shops and research our given brand, ours being Timberland. Luckily for us we had a Timberland store in the vicinity and we were even able to see the shoes Caoimhe designed herself.

We then had to take inspiration from our research and reinnervate the brand. We decided to go with the modern trends and my choice of trend was chunky sneakers. I went for a basic low-top with a large treaded sole to combine the style of modern and classic footwear.

I loved how my design turned out and our group was able to communicate our path for the brand perfectly to the class. with the use of colour palettes, trend graphs and material choices, we had a very good solution to adding a modern touch to the brands name.

This workshop really reignited my love for footwear and design and i feel like it just motivated me more to take this career path.

ROL Designs