How to get into footwear design as a fresh graduate in ID?

I am very interested in this field. I like designing shoes, bags and other fashion stuffs more than products. But I do not have any practical experience. And is it difficult to find a job in footwear design?Thanks.

Footwear being a combination of industrial design and fashion is pretty cool. Some companies lean much more to the innovation, ideation side of things, others toward the fashion world, what does this mean for you? Good things:

  1. footwear companies are allways looking for new tallent. Most campanies release new product a minimum of 3-6 times a year. The market is conditioned to see new things all of the time. Where a product company might release a new product in a year (think like Gillette) a footwear company is going to release llike 30 a year in 10 colors each, if its Nike, it would be a hundreds of new models a year.

  2. think of the amount of designers needed to sustain that. Some footwear companies have great internal design communities and are allways looking for new tallent to liven the internal mix.

  3. due to the hude variety of product in the marketplace, their is a home for all different types of designers within the industry.

Thank for your answers. You are always so nice :smiley: .Since my school does not provide any class in footwear design, how can I learn more about shoe design? And how many percentage should be foot wear and bag design in my portfolio if I want to apply for a job as a footwear designer? Which skills do employers want in this field?

Well, it’s hard to give a concrete answer because the requirements are so varied from company to company.

Here’s a few portfolios I’ve sen catch some buzz around here:

http://www.jeremie-mallet.com/

Total coincidence they both have swooshes in there, it honestly doesn’t matter.

I can tell you a bit about what get’s love here, showing: thinking’ideation skills, ability to communicate ideas in a visual manner (hot rendering), ability to think outside the box.

Other places look for totally diferent things.

To learn about shoe making and construction I would recomend going to the Salvation Army or Goodwill Store and buyin a whole bunch of different types of shoes. Then cut them up and study them. You’ll learn a lot.

On portfolio balence. I would just try to work footwear in wherever you can. If you get a project to design a personal transportation device, do a shoe. If you get a project to do a project that incorporates consumer customizablity do a shoe, you get the idea. Do the same with bags. It’s not a must (but is good of course) at Nike, Reebok or Adidas, but It is neccessary to have some footwear at other places.

Hope that helps out a little. Few programs have footwear or bad design courses so don’t fret.