{"id":396758,"date":"2014-08-04T11:18:35","date_gmt":"2014-08-04T16:18:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.snkrsday.com\/?p=396758"},"modified":"2022-09-16T22:31:18","modified_gmt":"2022-09-17T03:31:18","slug":"pensole-world-sneaker-championship-diaries-day-10","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.snkrsday.com\/pensole-world-sneaker-championship-diaries-day-10\/","title":{"rendered":"PENSOLE World Sneaker Championship Diaries: Day 10"},"content":{"rendered":"
This summer, 30 young students from all the around the world have come together in Portland, Oregon, determined to change the footwear game by embarking in the PENSOLE World Sneaker Championship. Assigned to teams and representing a diverse range of brands, boutiques and major corporations across the industry, they’ve began their journey to design a product that’s ready for retail. These are their stories.<\/em><\/p>\n Roster:<\/strong> Sara Jaramillo, Quetzal Ramos, Victoria Adesanmi and Tuan Nguyen (CMF)<\/p>\n Friday.<\/p>\n A lot of great designers from Jordan Brand, Adidas, Under Armour and Nike came into the Pensole Studio to take a deep look at our projects. It is great to hear what they have to say; every designer is different and they work in different areas as well, so you can see your project from multiple perspectives and realize what is good and what is “not so good.”<\/p>\n I think I speak for all of us when I say thank you to everyone for taking your time to come in and speak with us, especially to Ashley from Nike Sportswear, it was only for a few minutes but she was very precise about our directions and what is happening now in the industry on a global level.<\/p>\n Ashley and Sara #NikeSportswear\n Edmund Holmes -color designer from Nike- is super talented and he gave an unexpected presentation of his portfolio. By the way, you can see a lot of his painting all over the studio.<\/p>\n Edmund Holmes, one of the best color designers in the industry.\n On the other hand, I feel bad for my teammates of Pony and Target, maybe because they are in the other area and they don’t have the same attention. So please if you are reading the blog today and you plan to visit us, share a little of your time with them.<\/p>\n Saturday<\/p>\n \u201cI try to live freely from moment to moment, letting things happen and adjusting to them.\u201d PENSOLEWSC . TEAM NIKE . QUETZAL . MEXICO<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Roster:<\/strong> Dexter Sulit, Claudia Lopez, Daniel Raes and Marcus Taylor (CMF)<\/p>\n Two weeks down and we\u2019re still going strong. I couldn\u2019t tell you how many hours the other students and I put in this week. I can safely say that it is over 12 hours a day though. It takes discipline and consistency to become a better designer and produce good work. It\u2019s not always easy and we\u2019re often tired but we love what we\u2019re doing. One of the students was leaving the studio late at night and asked when we were going to leave, I replied that we would leave when we achieved our dreams. Now this isn\u2019t practical but it\u2019s certainly the mindset that you have to be in to get where you want to be no matter where that is. We\u2019ve been sketching non-stop and will continue to do so through this week. The only difference is that now we will be asked the difficult questions, like why we chose a design element or how it would work. Each day brings us closer to the final critique and the potential for our dreams to come true.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s a look at some inspiration for my project. These are Stingray hides at the Oregon Leather Co. down the street.\n Here is an actual dyed stingray skeleton. The amount of amazing things you can find in nature and animals is astonishing.\n Here\u2019s a look at some of my sketches inspired by the stingray. I took elements from its skin, its electrical field sensing ampullae and the network of cartilage that forms its skeleton.\n -Daniel Raes<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Roster:<\/strong> Stefan Cristobal, Sese Izurieta-Herrera, Dale Shepard, Lindsey Johnson (CMF)<\/p>\n Friday was a busy day for everyone as companies around here are on a summer schedule and a bunch of designers from Nike, Adidas, Jordan, Keen and Under Armour showed up at Pensole to guide us with our projects. Colour designers, material designers, graphics, developers and marketing experts fed us with great information and feedback. It was so helpful. Gathering new ideas and exploring all different parts of the design process helped me improve my story and my overall project. What helped the most though was being able to speak to women and get their personal feedback, as my project is going towards that direction.<\/p>\n Only ten more days until the final presentation. A lot to work on. I\u2019m really curious on what everyone’s projects will evolve to. Here are some photos from Friday so you can see who came to visit us.<\/p>\n The whole group getting ready to pitch their projects to the visitors.\n Ako showing Matt his personal project. Footwear for drummers, how crazy is that!\n Beth pitching her Jordan: Back Pedaling shoe!\n <\/p>\n Roster:<\/strong> Danny Chambers, Ruben Eriksson, Marcus Thomas and Thalia Meraz (CMF)<\/p>\n Today we continued the conversation and critiques to gain more direction. Guests from all the major west coast footwear brands visited the studio and provided some great new feedback. The highlight of my day was talking and learning from a pattern maker at Danner boot company who gave me not only design insight, but production advice as well.<\/p>\n As a team, Product of New York seems to be in the same place. Talia Meraz has crafted a great overarching story that sets all three projects up perfectly. Through working as a unit from the start, I think our team has been able to steer of the common pitfalls of collaborative projects. <\/p>\n Roster:<\/strong> Guilherme Lemes, Jesus Garate, Jared Fiorovich and Shaun Kosoy (CMF)<\/p>\n Friday was all about feedback and meeting new people. My classmates and I worked on our six newest concepts as we are getting closer to the final product. As our projects evolve, our design brief changes as well. We also received many visitors from different companies like Nike, Adidas, Jordan and Under Armour. I talked to several designers from those brands and listened to their opinions on my design progress. I found it interesting how they all had different attitudes and personalities, but at the same time they follow similar design philosophies. They also helped me form a strong decision for my next step in this project. The best part is that they chose the one concept that I had the most interest in. This concept is inspired in the art of origami. I want my consumer to have the opportunity to paint and customize his shoe with paint or markers, but I also want to use the origami inspiration to create a shoe that can be also physically customized. This includes folding the upper or breaking the upper surface apart. I am still working on the next variations inspired on the art of origami. I think this new concept has a great opportunity to bring the customization culture of shoes to another level, so all I have to do now is to find the \u201cone\u201d way to achieve this goal.<\/p>\n Another day, another set of ideas.\n Edmund explaining how to use inspiration and your design story as inspiration to find the right colors for our projects.\n My desk, my wall, my work.\n <\/p>\n Roster:<\/strong> Zia Ahmad, Clifford Charles, Andrew Parks and Lindsey Johnson (CMF)<\/p>\n Friday, Day 13:<\/p>\n By no means am I a used car salesmen, but I would totally be great at it! I think.. well, maybe not. I don\u2019t know, but I totally felt like one on Friday!<\/p>\n Dragging industry professionals over to my project and \u201cselling\u201d them on my shoe.<\/p>\n And honestly? It went pretty well! I got to speak to some big timers! Justin Taylor from Jordan Brand, as well as head of international markets and a few people from Adidas and even Under Armor.<\/p>\n And the verdict is in! I need to take my project down a notch. I\u2019ve got too many features and doo-dads. I need to focus on a problem and solve for that and not over-do it.<\/p>\n I think every design phase has an arc.<\/p>\n First you throw every idea you have at it, some ideas suck and others are descent and they stick!<\/p>\n That\u2019s the point where you need to edit even your good ideas. Like, \u201cokay is it really necessary for the shoe to solve ALLLL THESE problems?”<\/p>\n Or should it be more simple and focused.<\/p>\n And that\u2019s where I\u2019m at right now. Digesting all this advice and trying to figure out how best to apply what I\u2019ve learned.<\/p>\n Because there were a bunch of people here this week, but there will be a bunch MORE next week!<\/p>\n So I definitely wanna keep my project moving forward with increasing speed and accuracy!<\/p>\n We\u2019ll see what happens!!<\/p>\n Stay tuned!!!<\/p>\n -Z<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Roster:<\/strong> Satoshi Sutoh, Jonathan Guisbert, Ako Xiang, and Set Peterson (CMF)<\/p>\n This weekend was like a sketching marathon! The Under Armour team kept pencils to paper both Saturday and Sunday and we\u2019re feeling good about our progress so far. After some great feedback from professionals on Friday we had to rethink some of our concepts, make adjustments and also decide what not to adjust if we felt strongly about it. One of the challenging things we dealt with was deciding which feedback to take action on and which comments could only serve us going forward for the next design. For me, it\u2019s in my nature to try and please everyone, but I\u2019m learning that it\u2019s really impossible to do that, so I have to ultimately do what\u2019s best for the consumer I\u2019m designing for, not for me or for anyone else. \u2013Jonathan Guisbert<\/p>\n Welcome to my little design corner at my apartment. I moved to Portland from NY last year to continue to pursue my passion for product design. Fortunately, this meant that once I got into World Sneaker Championship, I didn\u2019t have to travel far to attend. While I do enjoy being down at the Pensole studio with all the other students, I like working alone sometimes so I can really get in the zone. Plus, I have easy access to food since the fridge is about 4 feet from my desk\u2026strategically placed! This weekend, I spent many hours at this desk sketching and shutting the world out with some 90\u2019s hip hop, which really get my creative juices flowing. \u2013 Jonathan Guisbert<\/p>\n Tools of my trade: Up until 2 weeks ago, I had almost completely forgotten about the No.2 pencil. As an industrial design student, I\u2019ve been taught to sketch in pen and I think it\u2019s kept my lines deliberate, but also, sometimes prevents me from making slight adjustments without overpowering my sketches. D\u2019Wayne has really pushed us to use pencils, and although he didn\u2019t want to give us a specific reason at first, he later explained that it was to enhance our sense of proportion, being able to make very subtle changes in lines is key to learning proper proportions because it makes you think of how the shoe is actually built, where the upper gets glued to the midsole, and where the crevices of the heel counter can begin\/end. He kind of teaches like Mr. Miagi from Karate Kid. I definitely appreciate this teaching style for design; since footwear is so organic, there are lots of subtleties that you need to hone in on to make your sketch look right. One thing I\u2019m also learning is that warm up sketches are really important; repetition creates habits, and habits then become who you are (got that line from D\u2019Wayne). While at first I hated using pencil, after sketching with the tool so many hours, it\u2019s become kind of dear to me. I like that it can be soft when I need it to be, or bold when I want to punch up some lines. Plus, I really like the fact that a good eraser can go a long way! The above are some of the tools I\u2019ve been using the past few weeks and I think it\u2019s also good to be versatile and work in different mediums because every tool has a different feel\/texture, almost a different personality. \u2013Jonathan Guisbert<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Roster:<\/strong> Elizabeth Steenwyk, Maher Jemili, Guy Perez and Tuan Nguyen (CMF)<\/p>\n Time flies as our projects begin to bear fruit. Already it has been two weeks since we started the World Sneaker Championship. A lot has been learned in those weeks and it\u2019s time to put it all on paper.<\/p>\n Friday we were visited by designers from Nike, Jordan, Adidas and Under Armor. They came to watch our progress and critique our work so far. The critique was helpful but hearing how they chased their dreams really inspired and ignited our spirits, knowing some of them had sat in the same chairs we were sitting in now.<\/p>\n Edmund, a color designer from Nike, walking us through storytelling with color.\n The weekend is here but the show must go on. Many of us are working late at the Pensole studio or back in our rooms, refining the work based on notes we took from the designers\u2019 feedback.<\/p>\n Pensole 24\/7\n Getting outside for break to get refueled.\n -Guy Perez<\/p>\nTEAM NIKE<\/h2>\n
\n– Bruce Lee
\nWhen the class started D’Wayne told us that we had to get six new sketches by Monday, but better. We need to make sure that our designs speaks for themselves, so we need to show more details, other views than the lateral and outsole.
\nWe also had one more visitor from the brand Android Homme, he spoke to some of the students as well.<\/p>\n Scott (Android Homme) and Claudia (team Adidas).\n directions in my next post. Stay tuned for more.\nTEAM ADIDAS<\/h2>\n
TEAM ANDROID<\/h2>\n
TEAM PONY<\/h2>\n
\n-Danny<\/p>\n Some emerging Product of New York concepts.\n Marcus Thomas pitching his vintage tech concepts.\n Rueben Erikson pitching his commuter concepts.\nTEAM TARGET<\/h2>\n
TEAM UNDFTD<\/h2>\n
TEAM UNDER ARMOUR<\/h2>\n
Team Jordan<\/h2>\n