From Dream to Reality: The 10 Steps It Takes to Create a Sneaker

Image via Complex Original

This step can be found two ways. If you are an independent designer or starting your own company you will create your own brief. Or, if you are working for a company you will be given a brief, most likely from the Marketing team or the Product Planning team. A good brief is a detailed brief. It should tell you the age range of the consumer, what the consumers do in their shoes, where they buy their shoes, what type of style they are looking for, what type of technology the shoe will feature, where the shoe places in the current category, how much is the shoe going to cost and — to me, one of the most important aspects from a design standpoint — is the product intended to be revolutionary or evolutionary?

I have seen some good briefs and some very, very bad briefs. One of the worst briefs I ever received described the consumer as " the life of the party, he's usually the one rolling the keg into the house while his buddies are still in class." That was for a performance shoe. What do I do with that? No matter whether you create your brief or you receive your brief; make sure it contains everything you want your product to cover. This is going to kick off what the future will become.

Now that you have your brief, it's time to put that brief to work. You need to take all of the information you received and seek out the new trends in that category. If you are doing a fashion-based or lifestyle shoe it would be good to look at future trends, colors and materials that are taking off in other categories that are similar to your product. If you are creating a performance shoe, I have always felt the best way to research it is to actually do the function it is intended for. When I first started designing running shoes, I didn't run and because of that I didn't really grasp why the shoes were designed the way they were. Once I started running, I really began to get an understanding of what a running shoe was in all its different forms. Now I am comfortable designing anything from a short mile running shoe to a long-distance tech running shoe. Had I not started partaking in the sport I was creating for I wouldn't have been able to create relevant solutions to the problems we were trying to solve. Besides, nobody wants to buy a shoe from someone who is posing like they know their market; you need to be your market. If you can't become your market then you have to do everything you can to learn every nuance about that category. You should know it inside and out. That way when you are challenged why you are taking that area in a new direction, you can back it up with your research.

I discussed this in-depth in "10 Essential Tools Every Aspiring Sneaker Designer Should Possess", but the one thing I didn't discuss in that piece is who you create the story with. When you design you are on a team. Most teams consist of Marketing, Design, and Development. There may be more at other companies but those three are always the core of the group. All of them should take part in creating the story of what the product will become. It is important to have everyone on board because the product will reflect each group's input. If Design and Marketing are on different pages than Marketing might end up selling the shoe into the wrong store and putting the wrong advertising together. On the other side, if Design and Development are going down two different paths, then you may end up with a fully stitched shoe when you wanted a seamless Hyperfused upper. Before you know it you have a shoe that was intended to be the next Hyperdunk and it is being sold into Kohls for 65-year-old men and is made out of brown leather. None of you wanted that, but it happened. Make sure you are all on the same page.

Now it is time to create or, as most designers call it, ideate. This period generally lasts for about two to three weeks depending on what type of production schedule you are on. In those weeks it is important to come up with any and all ideas that revolve around creating a solution that is relevant to your brief and story. I have found that the best way to create during this period is to not limit yourself. Your number-one goal should be finding a way to create a product that either evolves or revolutionizes a category. Sometimes it takes more than drawing to do that. A lot of times I find myself working directly with the material that I am going to be making the shoe out of. Find what works for you and embrace it and always evolve it!

If you are creating for your own brand you don't have to to deal with this next step, which is often times the most frustrating — the sketch review! Sketch reviews are a gift and a curse. Some designers are great at spinning their story into an amazing presentation that sells the shoe to everyone at the company. Others hide behind their ideations and never fully sell the idea. Reviews are good because it keeps you in check, and if you did the first four steps right then you shouldn't have any problem. What makes them frustrating is when you know you are going down the wrong path because someone doesn't grasp your vision. It is important to remember that if you are working for a brand then you are working to sell that brand's product. You were hired to bring your inspiration to their footwear. You were not hired to come and create your product under that brand's name. So remember that it isn't your shoe, it is their shoe and you have to do what is best for them. Even if that means going down a path that you don't always agree with.

Next you take the key elements you learned from the review and you refine your design. Sometimes it doesn't take much to refine, other times you are virtually starting over. No matter what you are working at a much quicker pace, possibly just a few days, so you can get your design out the door and to the factory to start the pull-over/sample phase.

This is when designing becomes very fun. It's amazing to see your design come to a physical state but it's also the time you wished you took some sort of Asian language in college as opposed to a damn Earth Science class that got you an easy elective credit. Getting someone to understand your design in your own language is hard enough, let alone getting someone who is halfway around the world and doesn't understand a word you are saying and is working when you are going to bed. That's why it is important to realize that drawings are your second language. Draw everything! Every view, every stitch, every material, every thickness of foam, every type of mesh, draw everything you can think of. Make it kindergarten proof. And if you get the opportunity to go to Asia and work in the factory with the manufacturers, take it! Not only will it be an eye-opening cultural experience but you will get so much more work done. What normally takes three days will only take three hours. It will be the hottest and most humid experience of your life, but it will be life-changing for your design career.

Over the next three months you will go through various revisions to your samples. Some samples will need elements that are just not working redesigned, while others will be simply shifting a line to be closer to what you intended. As you work your way through the revisions they will become very detail oriented. You will be measuring thicknesses and distances to get the proper look you desire. The one thing that should be noted during this process is to make sure that your revisions are aligning with your brief, story and sketch that drove the initial direction. The initial direction created an emotion with the team you are working for and it is important that your final samples reflect that emotion. This can be the hardest part of designing. It's easy to create a hot sketch but it's hard to create a hot design.

While your shoes are going through revisions you will have a decent amount of downtime. Sometimes that is spent on revising previous designs that are coming in for sales samples, or you may be starting an advanced project that requires more time, but most companies will have you working on colorways. While it is becoming much more common for footwear companies to have color teams that are dedicated to creating the color story for each season, something the automotive industry has been doing for decades, not every company has this. So it is important, whether you have a color team or not, for you to create colorways that highlight and celebrate the intention of the design. The color selections also need to align with the rest of that season's line. Its hard work but it is fun work. At the same time you are developing color you are also selecting materials. This too may fall under the color team but like creating a story it should be a collaboration with them as well. Material selection can become overwhelming because there are trillions of materials to pick from. No company has a shortage of suppliers to select from. The important thing to remember while picking materials is to remember the function of your shoe, to balance out textures and keep costs in line. You don't want to create a shoe that doesn't perform, looks busy and is way over cost.

The final step to creating a shoe is the sales sample. It took roughly 10 months to get here but you now have the final vision of your shoe. It is a representation of all materials and manufacturing processes that will happen in production. There are probably a whole slew of colorways, way more than will go into production. The reason for that is because marketing is pitching every possibility to every retailer. You would be amazed at how much control the retailer has over your final design. If it is a powerful enough retailer, they can and will tell you to move a logo, change a color or change the whole shoe. This happens at every brand and it is not always a bad thing. The reality is that the retailers are helping you to finalize a product that sells for the both of you. After you receive all of the input — and hopefully the orders for the shoe — its time to place the order for the molds and materials. It will take roughly eight months to kick off production and get the shoes to the shelves. That's all out of the designers hands, so its time for you to move on to your next creation!