introduction and sneaker project

hey guys!

I’m b-will and I’m a self-employed musician, web developer and designer from sweden. a few years ago I started my own clothing brand as a side project. it’s basically funded with money I earn from making websites and part time jobs and at this point I’m nowhere near breaking even. but I love it and people wearing my design is a lot more rewarding than making money.

so I’m a total sneaker head and designing shoes is something I’ve wanted to do long before I even started this brand. but I have a lot of respect for the craft and even though I have previous experience of working with factories and developing products I realized that if I was going to make shoes I would have to do A LOT of research. so my first shoe release might still be a year or more away but I’m looking for information and working on my designs every day.

I’m not here to advertise so let’s just say one of the company logos is an enclosed R (kind of like a ®) and it’s something I’ve wanted to incorporate in my shoe designs.

so I’m working on a casual mid/high basketball sneaker. the basic concept is to have the R as an overlay on the side panel, tilted to the back, making the upper arc on the right side part of the collar (on a high top) and the lower line the eyestay extending down towards the toe (I try to maintain the proportions of the logo but this line has to be distorted to make it work). so this goes for both sides of the shoe even though the R gets reversed. then to enclose the R (I’ll refer to this part as the frame going forward) I’ve tried many different approaches and they all affect the toe and heel parts.

here are some of the earlier drafts I’ve done (even the first one I made so that you can see how the concept has evolved):




so as you can see in the last two pictures I decided to make the frame connect with the eyestay and kind of bridge over to the the other side while at the same time run up the tongue and kind of connect to the top arc on the R. that way it gets properly enclosed and I think that brings some balance to the design.

here are some of the later drafts:

so after trying out a few more things I decided going with a plain toe part (like in the orange/2nd one) and having the side panel overlap it made more sense than trying to extend the frame all the way to the tip of the toe (like in the other three).
another thing that I tried out (in the neon green/4th one) was making the frame more square with rounded edges which makes the gaps more like half teardrops. so I made this alternative logo to use as a base:

and I think that works a lot better with the the shape of the shoe.

here’s a tape up of my latest draft:

I’ve printed the tongue and side panels on adhesive paper and tried to position them on the shoe, cutting and folding them over edges.

the shoes I’m taping on aren’t ideal as the toe part, eyestay and the collar aren’t very similar to my desired end result. also, adding the tape and the paper makes them look really thick and the paper isn’t very elastic so it gets wrinkled. however I feel like it’s a good way to check measurements and it has given me a better idea of much of each parts is visible from the different views.

sorry for this incredibly long post, I appreciate you taking the time to read it. any feedback you can give me will be very helpful! I’m taking this one step at a time and right now I’m focusing on getting the shapes and lines right. I feel like I’m getting there and once I have it down I’ll start exploring materials and colorways and do a proper rendering with seams and everything. I’ll keep updating this thread as I progress!

by the way, please feel free to correct me if I’ve misinterpreted some of these terms, I’m still learning! :slight_smile:

peace / b-will