Take a Walk in my Shoes

If I’m being honest, this shoe redesign task was probably the one that scared me the most out of all the SDS work we were given over the Christmas break. Design has never been my strong suit, but after really researching and understanding my chosen artist, Ed Ruscha, I realised that the simplicity in the way I think could actually make for a really good design and I could not be more pleased with my final outcome.

To begin, I had a lot of ideas and I was finding that they were very different to each other and were ideas that – if I tried to mold into one solid design for both shoes – would end up looking too cluttered and likely undone due to my easily frustrated nature when it comes to designing. Therefore, I decided to generate all my ideas digitally using a drawing app, which I found to be the most useful thing I did for this task, as I was able to mess up as many times as I wanted! The shoes I bought were plain white sneakers from Primark and found them perfect as a blank canvas to work on.

In the end, I decided to go with two different designs for each shoe. The first one is painted in acrylic and is made up of various block colours that actually take direct colour combination inspiration from two of Ruscha’s works (shown below). I originally was going to use acrylic paint pens to achieve this, but after experimenting with the medium earlier and realising I did not have a very vast colour range, I decided paint was a better option to fully achieve the solid effect I was going for. I really enjoyed the painting process and found it quite easy to build up and found it also didn’t take too long to dry.

After painting the shoe, I stuck some brown craft paper onto one side to exhibit a mountain like landscape and also wrote the word “London” onto the edges of the shoes to create Ruscha’s word effect.

For the second shoe, I decided to take inspiration from the London tube map and decided to also keep it quite minimal by drawing the map onto the bottom platform of the shoe and the top. To do this, I used acrylic paint pens which I found worked amazingly! I was able to achieve the precision I wanted, with the colours I wanted, while also being able to have control over the way I drew my lines which I wouldn’t have gotten from normal paint. I was originally going to use fine liners, but am glad I didn’t as they don’t work as well on the shoes I bought.

I wanted to use the tube map as a guide for a couple of reasons. First of all, it reflected Ruscha’s artworks where he had drawn maps of his hometown in California. I was able to take this concept of home and apply it to myself in the way London was my new home, using the tube map to display a sense of place. I love how vibrant the colours turned out on this shoe and also like how the conceptuality is so important to the design.

Overall, I have really learnt that my fear of design tasks is quite easy to overcome when I plan properly. I find that organising my thoughts and time correctly makes such a difference to my outcomes and my reaction to my outcomes. I love how these shoes turned out and while they may not be the most out-there pair of shoes, I think I hit the brief of artist inspiration quite well and also reflected my own personal style and skills. I’m super excited to see what tasks will arise using these shoes and feel quite confident going into the media classes. I think if I had more time, I could have played with more design ideas and maybe pulled something a little more out of the box, but overall, I’m satisfied with the outcome of this task.

UPDATE 5TH OF JANUARY 2021:

After seeing these photos of my shoes, I decided to actually add an extra element that I didn’t have in my initial designs which are coloured shoe laces. I didn’t like the plain white look of the white laces, so decided to invest in some gradient rainbow coloured laces that I think compliment the colours I have used on my shoes really well and will come across more bold in my media shoot.