01:07:27
One of the classes I'm taking this quarter is an interesting new course, Footwear Design. It's a collaborative class between fashion design students and industrial design students. It's also somewhat experimental... this is the first time UC has ever offered such a course, so my classmates and I are the guinea pigs. A few of the industrial design students had interned at footwear companies such as Reebok, New Balance, and K-Swiss. After getting their feet wet and sharing their experiences with their classmates, they petitioned their teachers to put together this course.
This is the first week of classes, so we're mainly getting settled in, getting used to sitting still for 2-3 hours again. While the projects for the course haven't been discussed, we have already been working on trend research. We have not been researching any footwear - we're looking at big picture trends, such as people returning "back to the basics" with the way they live their life. We're analyzing articles and drawing conclusions to begin naming some of those trends.
Even if the projects turn out to not work or something, the course will still be very informative and beneficial, because for 1 of the 2 classes per week, top industry professionals will be flying in to give lectures.
Today, we were visited by Phil Gallant, the managing director of design & development at K-Swiss. He had an impressive resumé, including 20 years at Reebok.
Phil gave us about 3 hours of his time, and will be giving us more outside of class tomorrow. He put together a wonderful powerpoint presentation with everything you might need to know about constructing a shoe. He passed around samples of each step in the process and fielded our questions along the way. He talked about the specific materials used, the process of construction in a factory, and how to get that shoe to the company's distribution center.
We requested that he post some of the terminology from the powerpoint on our school "blackboard" website so that we could refer to it throughout the quarter. If I do receive that info, I'll post it here for your benefit!
Love, Elizabeth
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