{"id":463245,"date":"2015-10-01T10:30:02","date_gmt":"2015-10-01T14:30:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.snkrsday.com\/?p=463245"},"modified":"2022-09-17T14:32:50","modified_gmt":"2022-09-17T19:32:50","slug":"interview-designer-quintin-williams-details-dwight-howards-peak-dh1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.snkrsday.com\/interview-designer-quintin-williams-details-dwight-howards-peak-dh1\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview \/\/ Designer Quintin Williams Details Dwight Howard’s PEAK DH1"},"content":{"rendered":"
\u00a0words & interview \/\/ Nick DePaula:<\/strong><\/p>\n Recently, China-based footwear brand Peak Sports officially introduced Houston Rockets center Dwight Howard as its newest endorser, in a grand\u00a0celebratory “signing ceremony” in Beijing with brand execs and fans alike all on hand. As one of the country’s premier athletic companies, Peak has been a longtime official league sponsor of the NBA in China, and has featured on-court endorsers through the years like Jason Kidd, Tony Parker, George Hill and many, many others.<\/p>\n Adding Dwight Howard to the fold not only gives the company hope that his personality and presence can resonate with the hoops frenzied fans across China, but it also gives Peak a\u00a0leading player\u00a0on one of the country’s most favorite and followed teams, the Houston Rockets.<\/p>\n In order to sign a player of Howard’s stature to a shoe deal, Peak had to be talking “signature shoe deal”<\/em> from the start. The plan was to give Dwight his own sneaker for Day 1 of the 2015 NBA season, and Peak turned to its Los Angeles-based lead basketball designer, Quintin Williams<\/a>, to craft and create a potential first signature shoe option for Howard.<\/p>\n A 6’7″ former high-level basketball player himself, Williams looked to blend his inherent on-court performance insights with an organic and flowing style that would embody Dwight’s freak of nature size and frame. As a student at former Jordan Design Director\u00a0D’Wayne Edwards’ acclaimed Pensole Footwear Design Academy<\/a>, Williams learned about the importance of storytelling and layered design cues, an approach he was eager to bring to Dwight’s product.<\/p>\n To hear all about his aerospace inspired DH1 design, I recently caught up with Quintin Williams over the phone. Check out our full conversation below, as Williams shares insights into his quick rise through the design world and the detailed backstory behind his Dwight Howard signature concept. The brand is letting consumers decide between Quintin’s and a Beijing-produced design that\u00a0will eventually become Dwight’s debut sneaker, and you can place your vote for the first Peak DH1 shoe here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Nick DePaula: Can you first share a bit about your design background and how\u00a0you landed at Peak?<\/strong><\/p>\n Quintin Williams: My story has been a little obscure and all over the place. [laughs] I’m from a small town in Georgia, and I graduated from SCAD, the Savannah College of Art and Design<\/a>, in 2011 with an Industrial Design Bachelors degree. Before I graduated, I had my first internship in Brooklyn, New York. This was at the beginning of my junior year, and I was there designing private label boots for different European companies. They were models based off of construction boots, hiking boots and trail boots, and that was my first foot in the door in the industry.<\/p>\n I was there for approximately five months, and then I flew directly from New York to Pensole in Portland. D’Wayne invited me out to take the class, and he thought I had some talent. Back then, it was more of a hand-picked student base, and it wasn’t as open, so it was really flattering for me. I still remember getting the email<\/em>, and it meant a lot to me. Being there, and being in the midst of so many great, great designers like E. Scott Morris, D’Wayne and some other people at local brands there, it was a great<\/em> experience to be in that environment. I learned a lot, and more and more about storytelling. A lot of what we do in design is about storytelling, and sometimes designers have trouble leaving the story behind in the product. That was my main takeaway from Pensole, and it was awesome.<\/p>\n I went back to school for two quarters, and then that same internship I did in Brooklyn wanted me to come back for a paid project, and this time, I would be living in China. [laughs] So I lived in Dongguan, China for two months at the factory! It was definitely a culture shock, and that was my first time out of the states. I’m out there with the senior designer, and I had to finish a whole line of athletic boots in two months and get the job done. It was dope to be there and see all the manufacturing processes and how everything works. Once I finished that project, then I went back to school and finished my degree at SCAD, and I\u00a0won a national design competition by Power Force Apparel<\/a>. It was a start-up brand out of Birmingham, Alabama, and they were looking for an in-house footwear designer. I got 1st place, and they asked me to move to Birmingham, so I said, \u201cAwesome!\u201d<\/p>\n That was my first full-time job, and I was the only designer there, so I learned a lot in that environment. Being the only designer, I didn’t have anybody to lean on, and I would reach out to people like D’Wayne and my fellow designers that I worked with in Brooklyn. After a year of being there,\u00a0I had a lot of offers from a lot of big companies: Nike, New Balance, adidas Originals and Puma.<\/p>\n I turned all of those down and decided to go with Peak Sports, because I wanted to be with an underdog. Peak isn’t as known in the states, so I can grow with the brand, and at that time, we were the #3 basketball brand in terms of on-court sponsored athletes in the league. It was Nike Inc., adidas and then Peak for on-court visibility, and I saw an opportunity there to be joining the brand specifically as a lead basketball designer. I’ve been here for two years now, and that’s been my journey.<\/p>\n NDP: That’s an amazing story, and a nice progression for you as you learned about the different aspects of design and the footwear business. What were some of the shoes that you’ve done at Peak along the way?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n QW: One of the athletes that I work closely with is George Hill from the Pacers. He’s had his own shoe for awhile now, but it’s more of a PE of an existing model that we modified for him. So I’ve been getting to know him and getting information from him to piece that together. I came up with a concept for him, and it was based off of his favorite hero, which is Flash<\/a>.<\/p>\n