Project Scope: This collaboration with Smartwool was intended to provide Vans styling with Smartwool materials to create a supremely comfortable casual shoe. We took the project to a prototyping stage and ultimately it fell victim to the pandemic. This was my design.
Tools used: Sketching/Modo
The project kicked off with a lot of consumer research and brief creation. After that I had a pretty good idea who I was building this thing for and I could craft the details and technical aspects of the project. I spent a lot of time working with a few key members of the design team to dial in those details and bring the project to life.
Once the concepts was feeling pretty good I used 3D to bring it life and dial in the details. I went through a few iterations before finally landing on the final design formula.
Something we noticed was the blocking needed to feel more Smartwool. As you can see from this sketchover below the design started to get that tip/saddle/heel breakup that feels a bit more on brand.
A trip to Boulder to meet with the Smartwool team yielded some new ideas for what type of construction we could use and how to dial in the comfort.
I was fortunate enough to be able to make a trip to the far east and work with the Asia team to adjust some things and learn abit more about the knitting process.
Following the trip to the far east and some further refinement the concept was getting pretty close. I was finally in a place to pull the Smartwool crew back in for some color collaboration to bring the concept to life and make some prototypes.
