It is seem strange that there is some kind of a map in footwear. Of course there is no real map in footwear, I created it. It is a result of my experience in shoemaking as a designer, shoemaker and patternmaker. Threw all those years of my work I divided most common types of shoes in groups, where in each group there are shoes with similar rules of design.
I created 6 groups and placed them in the graph the way, where you can understand how each group depends of another. I called this graph – “Map of footwear”, because this graph is like map of territory, where you can safely navigate and you can arrive to the place that you wish to arrive . This great territory is the word of footwear and the place, to which you desire to arrive, is your own creative shoe design. So this map will give you wide vision of footwear word, you will see it as complete picture without focusing only on one type of shoes. That’s mean that you will be able to create your unique design that combine characteristics from different groups of shoes, because you will know how to do it.
You can see how I do it on example of this shoe that combines characteristics from different type of shoes: pump shoes, boot and sandals. This manipulation of design can be possible and wearable only when you know characteristics of all type of shoes and how they influence on each other. To understand it you don’t need to know design rules of each existing type of shoes, you can know rules of just one of the types from the group with the same type of design. Don’t try to memorize the map, try to follow the connections.
Do you know now where you should start your design? What group collaborations will work for you?
Footwear Design Course: Footwear map – learn shoe combinations for ultimate footwear design 002