PENSOLE World Sneaker Championship Diaries: Day 16

TEAM UNDER ARMOUR

Roster: Satoshi Sutoh, Jonathan Guisbert, Ako Xiang and Seth Peterson (CMF)

For the past month, Sundays have been the day to relax, maybe even take a day away from the studio and go explore Portland. But not this Sunday. By tomorrow, the footwear designers need to have their shoe hand rendered and in D’Wayne’s mailbox. The last three weeks have been leading to this moment, and you can really feel the energy, or stress, in the air. As the color and material designer for the Under Armour Basketball team, I’ve seen the evolution that each footwear designer has taken with their ideas, and it’s a big responsibility to create a color and material palette to stand beside their great designs. Creating a story as deep as their designs has been a rewarding challenge.

This photo: Satoshi Sutoh working on his marker rendering

We still have a long way to go to finish our final presentations, but a big milestone is about to pass. We’ve all come to our core design ethos for this project. Whether it’s from a performance aspect or a story. That’s where the excitement is coming from. We spent the last three weeks digging through our minds, chasing this and refining it. And now, in one more week we’ll be presenting it to the industry that we have followed for so long. It’s our turn to impress the people who got us stoked on sneakers to begin with. I’m looking forward to sharing it with you on Friday. – Seth Peterson

This photo: Ako Xiang working on his marker rendering

Working on my design has been a great experience. I have been able to develop the functionality and then think about the aesthetic before marker rendering. The process has been really helpful to visualize how my final product could look. Can’t wait for Friday to present! –Ako Xiang

Color was a big part of my story because it plays a role in the emotion of the product. It’s an elusive notion; the fact that a product has a “feel” to it, but it’s something subtle that really affects buying decisions. So, before hand-rendering, I had to think about what kind of feel I’d get from certain colors and in order to do that. I did a bunch of quick thumbnails and explored the different blockings. It was a good learning exercise in use of tools as well because there are so many things I can do digitally, but when you have to render by hand, the options are limited to the markers you can find in store. – Jonathan Guisbert

Read the rest of the diaries here.