Ecco 2012 Wild & Mild

& wild

mild shoes for the catwalk and shoes for the market

design, editor

© 2013

kolding school of design

Michael Frederiksen, Just Add Design

Ågade 10 6000 Kolding +45 76301100 dk@designskolenkolding.dk www.designskolenkolding.dk

photos Michael Frederiksen

department of product design

translation

Head of Department: Mathilde Aggebo Lecturers: Eva Kappel, Helle Graabæk, Richard Lehner, Henrik Pagh Sørensen, Magnhild Disington and Michael Frederiksen

Marianne Baggesen Hilger

ISBN 978-87-90775-44-5

+ The wild & mild workshop is part of the strategic collaboration between Kolding School of Design and ECCO. This book was printed with support from ECCO.

& wild

mild

dream shoes, everyday shoes there seems to be

a world of difference between the shoes we see in high street shops and the shoes the models wear on the catwalk. Kind of the same difference that distinguishes our everyday life from the dream life that superstars and style icons lead in lifestyle magazines.

The shoes in the shops are designed to meet the practical functionality requirements of everyday life and have a broad appeal. Catwalk shoes serve to seduce and excite us and represent walking design experiments that continuously challenge our definition of shoes.

This book displays how students at Kolding School of Design work with shoe design in this cross-field between everyday life and dream life. The students have had to deal with very rational and commercial aspects as well as inventive and artistic aspects in order to design shoes that are absolutely realistic on the one hand and ‘far out’ on the other; or as expressed by the title: Wild shoes and mild shoes.

ECCO is synonymous with great comfort for a wide audience.

The company’s success is due to an in-depth understanding of customer needs and a distinct ability to put the right design out there at the right time and at the right price. ECCO is not about radical, avantgarde shoe design, and the extravagant dream world of the fashion industry is not the platform from which to market the company’s products. Nevertheless, ECCO invites wildness into the company’s long-term, strategic collaboration with Kolding School of Design because ECCO knows that in order to grow and reach new customer groups you need to think way out of the box. The mutually rewarding collaboration between ECCO and the school is very much about sharing the benefit of the significant development potential inherent in the interplay between the students’ unrestrained, pleasurable and spontaneous approach to shoe design and ECCO’s long-standing experience as one of the main players in the commercial shoe market.

mathilde aggebo head of department kolding school of design The company’s commercial focus is the focal point of the Wild & Mild project. The students’ design challenge has been to turn the wild and experimental into something mild and marketable. In other words: turn art into commerce. Fearlessly the students have had to fling themselves into the blue sky; grasp a wild shoe design from a flashing thunder cloud and land safely on their feet holding a realistic, commercial shoe that would only need a few modifications to be ready for production and the next season.

Despite a lot of show and apparent wildness it is all about sale and cool cash. About reaching the commercial goal which is ultimately to design shoes that real people in the real world can wear and want to buy. But sometimes, in order to reach your goals, you need to take a detour. With the Wild & Mild project the students have done just that and have pursued a wild, exaggerated, extravagant catwalk design in order to capture the basic material for their new shoe designs.; the essence of which is contained in the mild, commercial high street designs.

This is part of what we do as an educational institution: We work as a think tank and exploratorium for generating new ideas by employing new, challenging working methods. We have an obligation to help prepare the groundwork that enables designers and companies to compete internationally.

We do this by challenging their ideation processes so we can use the wildness of the young designers to create new, commercial concepts which help companies and design practices evolve.

Please enjoy this journey of growth together with the students and ECCO – from avantgarde to realistic ECCO shoe; from wild to mild.

sketching and process

helle graabæk study coordinator kolding school of design

design is in

many ways an alchemistic discipline where the designer is able to translate a sense of wonder or an observation into concrete form. The process is organic, filled with loops that continuously take you back to your basic idea and make you explore this from various angles using sketching, material experiments, prototyping and analyses. From concrete to abstract and back.

The starting point of this year’s ECCO project was the notion of ‘the wild and the mild’ – from Haute Couture to Pret á Porter. The assignment was to extract essences of the wild version while carefully maintaining what you could define as its form, language, or core and then, in a sophisticated manner proportion and place it accurately within the mild version.

There is something going on in the final designs – in the wild ones and more subtly in the mild ones which reflect more than just shoes that are fit for use.

One of the most difficult challenges for any designer must be to design a shoe as it requires a complex amount of competences. Therefore the students work across professional lines of study: Fashion, Textiles and Industrial Design. Apart from verbal communication the students communicate by visualising the abstract as a way of making it more tangible by mixing their individual specialised competences in order to grasp and materialise their ideas.

Their shared visual ”language” includes sketching, material experiments and investigation of form.

The ideas that the students identify form the basis for deciding the best suitable process creating an interplay between various methods such as drawing, collage, 2D and 3D investigation of material and form – and of course research and analysis.

The projects have required very different investigations. For instance, if the idea is to step into something soft and delicate – a layer cake – it is interesting to explore how the idea of layers can be transformed into soles, materials that can ‘give’, colours and surfaces with a dessert-like expression and how the soles can be clicked together to make the shoes functional, etc. Other groups have focused on mechanical or architectural principles; how a shoe opens or closes by itself when you put it on or take it off; or open, airy architectural construction principles concerning that which carries and that which is being carried.

Therefore the groups have organised their processes depending on the type of information they have needed to explore and clarify and subsequently translate into form.

graphics and texture: 3D CAD

concept: textile model

material: mock-up

giving form: clay model

material selection: leather

sole: wooden model

concept: draping on last

last: development of form

final model: parts

mechanical development: line drawing and wood model

sketching: line drawing

giving form: foam model

concept: plastic model

final model: montage

sketching: material collage

sketching on last: tape model

texture: plastic model

concept: form investigation of existing shoes

sketching: line drawing

concept: mock-up

sketching: paper drawing

concept: paper model

ideation: presentation and discussion

giving form: sketching on last

concept: mock-up

final model: montage

final model: finish

final model: sewing leather

final model: casting mould

concept: wood model on last

concept: mock-up

final model: sewing leather

inside the black box

michael frederiksen designer just add design

the sparkle of creativity flies and the designer gets a new idea. Bam! An everyday phenomenon in our line of work. Out of the blue the idea manifests itself, crystal clear and obvious. And after that another idea. And another one. We ideate non-stop, turn it into a profession to capture ideas from basically nothing and realise them by creating very concrete consumer products. We are catalysts for the new vibrant media; for the synthesis of knowledge and inspiration which we call design.

And the design process works. Day in and day out a skilled designer is able to sit down in the morning, look at an unsolved design problem and, by the end of the day, present a range of different proposals. We are constant, dependable ideation machines. Due to our familiarity with a series of well-tested mental tools we are able to, as a matter of routine, place our mind in that lush place where new ideas can grow. It is a safe, familiar place where we find ourselves in what we call a state of flow; a mental state where we become one with the object of our work, the stream of ideas flows freely, and it feels as if the project creates itself.

We know the design process and are at home in the state of flow; we seek it with all of our means and focus on increasing the frequency and duration of those periods when the mind dares to pull back and allow the subconscious to do the work. Time after time, experience shows us the undreamt-of power reserves hidden in the part of the mind which works intuitively, irrationally, and beyond logic and reason. A large part of the tools inside the designer’s toolbox work by giving the intellect a coffee break so that the intuition has peace to work. Yet, despite our familiarity with the design tools, we actually only understand a little bit of what goes on inside the core process of creativity: The forge that produces new ideas is located in a dark place inside the mind.

A place which is not available for introspection by the intellect and which therefore escapes any rational explanation. The sparks of creativity fly inside a black box, a magical machine, where ideas, much like the photons of a quantum mechanical test set-up, cannot be observed without the observer influencing the process.

All we can do is to provide the best conditions for this alchemistic process to take place. We cannot understand what goes on inside the black box, but experience has taught us how to provide the circumstances that allow homo ludens, the playful human being, to temporarily replace the rational homo sapiens and engage in playful creativity. And two of the most basic and reliable tricks for getting the playful human being out into the open is a good wall to play your ball up against and lots of space for wildness.

On the following pages you will see the result of the students’ work as they address a task that is neither too tightly nor too loosely defined inside a space which requires artistic wildness as well as commercial moderation. The solutions are inspired by wildness transformed into commercially oriented shoes with a more subdued and mild look. The students have used the wild shoes to explore the power reserves of the uninhibited and playful state of flow. After these mental somersaults they have managed to land safely on their feet and present a collection of shoes that bubbles with wild ideas but still fits the shops and the real world.

nanna fjord ditte grøngaard per voss nielsen

The wild shoe plays with a magic theme where heavy is carried by light. The hairs hanging from the shoe touching the ground present the illusion that the user and the heavy cubic shape on top of the shoe are being carried. The heavy elements emphasise angularity and roughness whereas the light elements accentuate transparency, softness and the organic.

The mild shoe’s transparent sole is covered in plastic threads that refer to the hair structure of the wild shoe and contribute to the light look of the shoe. The angular leather part with the mildly cubic expression makes the upper part heavy and counteracts the lightness.

mira vinzent matilde nyeland marie munk hartwig

The layer cake: Cake in layers, layers on the dish, the dish without layers, the dish without cake. A simple, fine, pure cake dish ready for multiple layers. Layer upon layer for special occasions. For birthdays where you revel in whip cream, icing and berries. On all other days the empty, delicate dish sits on the table and waits for these few, special days.

Layered cake, layer upon layer, cake upon cake, cake in shoe, shoe on cake, shoe in layers – a large, rich, luxurious layered cake with all the ingredients you would wish for. If you are a cake lover you build layers and layers of whipped cream, berries, cake bottoms and icing. If you are more of a fussy eater you select layers and ingredients. Now your favourite layered cake is finished and fabulous. You carefully stick your clean foot into the cake. Feel the softness, creaminess, wetness and coolness. Slowly your foot begins to squash the substance of the cake and it moves between your toes and surrounds your foot. The foot enters deeper into the cake – into the shoe.

anne kromann sarah sofie nørbo simon grønlund

The wild shoe is an obstacle (in Danish: hĂŚmsko); a shoe which physically and psychologically complicates your path through life. Physically because it weighs eight kilos and each step becomes a small struggle. Psychologically because its powerful expression almost takes over your personality and you cannot trust the surface on which you walk because the sole tips both ways. HĂŚmskoen, the obstacle shoe, cannot be trusted.

The mild shoe helps you forward. It is nice to wear and there are no particular design elements that stand out.

It has a delicate universe of its own of simple lines and colours that blend into one another. The shoe has full support of the heel but to create a reference to the wild shoe, which offers no support, we have placed a transparent piece inside the heel.

lina funder-nielsen maribel carlander amanda jexen larsen

Is it possible to create a shoe that visually distorts the shape of the foot without compromising the comfort of the shoe? How do we create dynamics and movement in a shoe when it is not physically moving? The characteristic twist of the wild shoe’s sole creates a visual dynamic which plays with the spectator’s perception of the shape of the foot.

The mild version of the idea of the twisted foot plays with the understatedw twist. The foot-shaped expression is kept at a distance in favour of an unnatural, abstract foot shape which has been transformed into a mild, casual shoe. The shoe intends to make the spectator believe that the foot has an unnatural shape.

Due to the design of the shoe its expression changes depending on the perspective. From one side the shoe appears to be half-way submerged into the sole and from the other side it looks slightly twisted.

stine mikkelsen camilla tønder rasmussen eleonora korobitsyna

The wild shoe imparts a sense of wanting to move forward but ending up in all sorts of other directions. At times you stand your ground but at others you lose your footing.

It’s like being a teenager not knowing who you are or where you belong.

The mild shoe conveys a sense of standing on firm ground. You are grown-up, know where you are and where you are going. You have experienced ordeals that define you, and you know yourself and your boundaries.

christina friis blach petersen christian nielsen signe eistorp nielsen

The main feature of the mild, sporty, casual shoe is its characteristic and technically accentuated sole. The shoe aims at a wide audience starting with the young and fashion-conscious.

The wild shoe takes its point of departure in the classic, architectural duality between that which carries and that which is carried. The heel and the sole are replaced by a spatial structure which focuses on the contrast between balance and imbalance and casts light and shadows on itself.

niels sylvester caroline ruby heike hilpert gitte lĂŚgĂĽrd

What would make you kiss a foot? Hairy feet, long disgusting nails, toes that are way too long and smelly feet all make you not want to kiss a foot.

But what makes a foot attractive?

How can we turn something disgusting into something pleasant? A shoe that inspires you to touch, feel and test it – because it makes you curious: what does it really do and how does it feel?

The user experience is essential. When the user is wearing the shoe, her body weight affects the outer silicone shell; a movement which alters the exterior design of the shoe and makes the user feel the shoe respond with a soft push inside. The shoe must be easy to put on; as easy as putting on a pair of socks in the morning.

bella elmborg wenja rømhild mohammed al-adhami

The wild shoe expresses the repeated series of movements of the human walk; the controlled fall in a continuous interaction between balance and imbalance in our walk through time.

christina gerken sara breitenbauch cĂŚcilie dyrup

The wild shoe is about the anatomy and dissection of a shoe. The design translates and simplifies the complex structure of the shoe into an honest, transparent and lively expression that conveys everything and hides nothing.

The mild shoe integrates the comfort of the sports shoe and the classic, delicate style of a men’s shoe in a new, simplified look. It is an honest shoe with nothing to hide and the materials are transparent and easy to read. The leather exudes quality inside and out and the rubber sole provides comfort and flexibility.

agnes bjerre claus kørup mette jensen

The wild shoe is inspired by the image of the shoe as a mask you put on or apply to your foot for emotional or functional reasons.

To achieve a sense of unfamiliarity, the sense that something is added, we have worked with layers both in terms of form and materials in order to create a contrast between the natural and the artificial. The transparent heel also brings out the sense that something is hidden.

The mild shoe takes its starting point in the silhouette from the wild shoe but it is lower, more comfortable and uses details and layers in a much simpler way.

The shoe is practical and usable and directed at a wide audience; a different type of everyday shoe that is feminine and stylish and suited for various occasions and outfits.

sisse falster camilla kirkegaard

The wild and the mild shoe are both hiking boots and exude the feeling of richness that you feel after a great hiking trip. The thrill of conquering the summit and the adrenalin rush. The quest for the perfect kick. The feeling of being supernatural and invincible when nature displays her most beautiful and surreal side. The way the rough, rustic and merciless nature is tied to the brief moment when nothing can stop you but you also feel small and humble.

The shoes combine an abstract and surreal universe with functionality and existing elements from the familiar hiking boot. They bring together functional elements and aesthetics and convey a sense of fulfilment.

jeanette munk jette skibelund marie schlosser

The wild shoe aims to handle the unwieldy and bring it into play at a higher level.

It focuses on the encounter between complex, organic shapes and rustic surfaces inspired by Nordic nature and the simple shapes, processed materials and strong colours of industrial society.

The mild shoe translates the wild shoe’s extreme contrasts into a more subtle, market-oriented look but tries to maintain the original wildness and identity.

Essentially the interplay between surfaces and materials is the same but it is transformed into a form language which resembles that of the conventional sandal.

jessica di nota amanda nygren mia strøbech

The wild and the mild shoe both draw their inspiration from death and the rituals surrounding it: The ritual of wrapping the dead, mourning jewellery and the colour white that represents death in many cultures.

The leather band wrapping of the mild shoe represents the bejewelled element, and imprinted leather with knit and draped surfaces is a reference to the wrapping of the dead.

Strings digging all the way into the sole refuse to let go, and the knits’ white serene colour keeps death near. The shoe has a modern look, but still feels ethereal. A mourning shoe.

The idea for the wild shoe derives from 19th century mourning jewellery; pieces that incorporated a physical part of a deceased person that relatives would wear to keep the person close. We treated the shoe as an accessory, created a knit and carefully wrapped the foot, encasing it with a bold and assymetric piece of jewellery that refused to let go.

linnea laursen kimmie bruhn kamilla knudsen

The wild shoe joins the foot and the leg and with its organic soft shapes cast in transparent bubbled rubber it integrates with the body. The foot is visible through the rubber which adds depth and a structure that resembles skin. The shoe is an extension of the body, and with its subtle encounter between the soft foot and the soft rubber it points to the delicate division between nature and culture.

The mild shoe is a commercial and comfortable shoe which is targeted at a wide audience but stays true to the starting point of the wild shoe and the soft organic shapes of the bones.

Compared to the wild shoe the use of synthetic rubber is reduced and leather has been added, which supports the idea of integrating the shoe as a part of the body in a more natural way.

maria cramer-møller sarah angantyr jon bak jensen hee-jin park

Shoes are about movement. The wild shoe comments on the constant movement of the energetic, wild and light human body with its flexibility and constant eagerness to move.

The solid material and the minimalistic form of the shoe underline this human capability by challenging the foot’s freedom of movement.

As a contrast to the rigidness of the wild shoe, the mild shoe gives the user a feeling of being free, lightweight and energetic. With its softness and minimalistic use of materials, the shoe puts no limits to the flexibility of movement. The user can move freely at high speed and feel protected without being captured in a heavy shell of stiff materials.

signe klok martin bo christiansen

The collection consists of shoes that are all mechanical in some way or another. When you want to take off the mild shoe you press on the heel with your other foot until the shoe “snaps� and you are able to pull out your foot. The look springs from the solutions which emerged from the process.

The wild shoe is a mechanical shoe. It is easy to slide into when it is open. The shoe closes by means of body weight which activates a closing mechanism that prevents the shoe from opening before you use the opposite foot to reactivate this mechanism.

Both shoe concepts are based on an innovative approach to taking your shoes on and off.

Investigations tell us that usually people use their hands and the opposite foot. From this discovery we created a shoe collection based on the dogma that the user cannot use her hands to take the shoes on or off.

lola le berre louisa reinholdt lin hansen bjarke bisgaard

The wild shoe and the mild shoe focus on the balance between a man’s masculine and feminine sides. The man longs to discover his true self but experiences a feeling of being trapped inside his own body carrying a heavy block around his foot. On the outside he appears masculine but inside he yearns to detach himself from his masculine identity, become a free spirit and explore a stable, confident and feminine side of himself through a radical transformation from his current, slightly awkward state.

The mild shoe shows the man the right path: Free as a bird with a feminine and confident exterior that has a masculine touch. He has left the unfamiliar, ungainly state and has discovered a harmonic, light-footed balance between his masculinity and his femininity.

Shoes for the catwalk and shoes for everyday wear. Experimental shoes that challenge the definition of a shoe. Commercial shoes that stay strictly within the realm of what the market will accept. Shoes for high fashion magazines and shoes for sales catalogues. Shoes that please the eyes as well as the feet. Shoe design carried by a clear artistic vision versus shoe design driven by the desire to create a sales success.

Shoe design for a selected elite and shoe design for the masses. Loud shoes and shoes that quietly fill their function. Dream shoes and shoes for everyday life. Wild and mild.

This book depicts how a group of students from Kolding School of Design create shoe designs inspired by the cross-field between the wild and the mild. The students take their point of departure in a wild idea that they capture in a design proposal. Then, they extract the essence of that idea and turn it into a mild, commercial shoe. This way of working uses the wild approach to create commercial shoe concepts that may seem tamed and quiet, but which still hold the wildness from which they were created.

The shoes in this book have been created by cross-disciplinary groups of students from Kolding School of Design’s departments of Fashion, Textiles and Industrial Design. The project is part of the strategic collaboration between Kolding School of Design and ECCO.

wild & mild

wild shoes and mild shoes