The Briefing by Sam Pearce & Jonathan Morss was a very well explained and quite in-depth introduction to the project. Here the students were able to get a feel for what it’s like to design for New Balance and find out what the brand plans on doing for next year’s 40th anniversary with the Made in UK range. We were introduced to some of the core ideas that the brand has for the project such as a focus on sustainability in materials, crossover designs of performance/ casual shoes, crafted details, fashion influences and technical details. Some of the new technologies that the brand now uses are Fuelcell which is a new type of midsole cushioning, and New Balance has also decided to use regrind rubber on their outsoles.
The first thing that came from this project was making the mood boards to start laying my ideas and the brief onto paper. I had made for what the brief has set, one for the Made in UK range, one for the iconic colour schemes used by New Balance and a final board for sustainability.
The creation of the customer profile page was one of the easier tasks on this project since I had written a report on the brand in my first year of the foundation degree so I had already talked about the customer profile of New Balance. On this page, I mentioned the most important elements such as how the customer profile had been conceptualised, what the main target audience is, how the brand gained popularity by not limiting itself to one niche group, the consumer focus of the ‘Made In UK 40th Anniversary’ range, and why the consumers invest in New Balance.
After researching the shoes that are currently in the Made in UK range, I picked out some very unique styles that could inspire my shoes when I would reach the sketching process and even the render process. Using simple photoshop techniques allowed me to create this simple yet informational board.
A quite important piece to include was the ‘What People Are Wearing’ board which essentially laid out some of the most prevalent and currently popular NB styles that the consumers are wearing. I would also make notes about the styles as to what they are, what is unique about them, what they have in common, whether they’re a top 10 best-seller, and so on.
I had spent some time in the Kimberlin library to use the WGSN service as it has been so useful for many of the projects I’ve previously worked on and it offers great insight on what is to be expected in the following years for the fashion and design industries. I picked out eight trends in total that were most likely going to be very useful and relevant to my design project and then I went on to take notes on some of the more important aspects from the trend forecasts such as the colours used, the possible accessories, any unique shapes and materials that fit the theme.
Just like all of my footwear designs, the sketching process always starts on paper. In my design sketchbook, I mentioned exactly what inspired the sole units, for example, one of my favourite designs here (bottom left) has been greatly inspired by the New Balance 327’s unit which features an extended outsole and circular rubber lugs but some features from the NB Shando such as the free-form shapes from the outsole have also been taken onto the design.
Just like how I designed the sole units, I drew up sketches and also final outlines of all the upper designs on photoshop and illustrator and then I laid the designs out on InDesign with explanations on the certain elements such as how the tongue is constructed or what kind of stitching I used to attach components. All 20 sole designs and 40 upper designs were designed during the two-week Easter holiday, so I was able to stay occupied during the time.
The six final designs were picked out based on which I liked the best and thought had the greatest potential in being sold to a wide market) [photo of six final designs]
Final Design Board (On the final design page, I laid out the shoe design with side view, midsole also at side view, the outsole, bloom insole, the shoe’s top view, and label plan followed by added notes about the major features such as stitching styles, materials used, and other related aspects.
I kept the material and colour package simple, only including images of the materials, labels on what the materials are, the colour name and NB code. The following pages were where the project started to become more of a challenge as I was not too familiar with these types of spec sheets that include such detail and even focus on the slightest features such as lace options and references as to what colours were used. I have sketched a fair few sneakers, but I’ve never had to design tooling tech packs like the ones you can see here so it was quite the challenge creating these pages after being introduced to this completely new part of designing and developing but in the end, I’m happy that I’ve picked up another very important and useful skill.
This project was the first time I had fully rendered a shoe design on photoshop without black outlines and for the final render page, I included four different views of the fully rendered shoe (the Lateral view, Top, Bottom and Medial). I’m very glad I gave rendering the shoe without outlines a go because it turned out much more realistic than the drawing with outlines and this made for a great final render page.
The name of the shoe, ‘Ash’, was inspired by the colours of the shoe as these tones are almost identical to the colours you see in a dying fire. The creation of the storyboard was all carried out on Photoshop and although it took some time for planning and laying it all out, it ultimately turned out well and put a nice finale to the project.
Thank you very much for reading the blog and please feel free to leave any comments and feedback for me to read!
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