#210620: Cultsport V-Man Ale Running Shoe
-
March 2021 -November 2021
-
Cult.Fit/CultSport is an India fitness startup company.
-
Product and design consulting
-
To design a collection of 6 running silhouettes and 2 new toolings for local India market.
This upper style is a first for me. Let me explain, I have always fascinated with those low profile marathon running footwear especially brands like Saucony. During a recent factory development trip just by happenstance that one of the factories I visited is one of the upper suppliers for brand Saucony.
I was able to take a very close look at the one of those marathon footwear upper I am always interested in. The light weight and low profile form of Saucony running shoe is executed via a heat and pressure fusing machine. There is a deep explaining of fusing technology here. Since I have always been a huge fan of performance running shoes which drives me to pay attention of how fusing is executed in running shoes.
The main design interest heavily lays within the overlay of the entire upper, which basically can make any underlay materials (mainly mesh) less boring. For this upper design the underlay body material is one piece mesh.
This overlay fusing piece design starts with branding. I want to make the branding stand out. The rest of the overlay area, such as collar, heel counter, eye-stay, etc. are designed as the extension of the branding.
There is a little “unwise” change in design at the end. The original concept is adjusted by adding an independent vamp piece and supporting pieces. These changes in the end create unnecessary difficulties in execution.
Fusing footwear upper is best executed with one single continuous overlay design piece. The additional pieces I added are independent from the main design which can’t be easily placed onto body mesh piece to be fusing at the same time.
When prototype samples came back factory made 2 versions. Once with embossed effect which I wasn’t even realize can be done in this way. I am not sure if the emboss version is a manufactory mistake or it is just something fusing can be achieved. For the time when and if this design going forward I will have to take a deeper look in the exact way the fusing is executed.
overlay executed with an embossed effect
overlay executed without embossed effect
Even though it is a mistake, but it is certainly a mistake worth making in order to completely understand how to best utilize fusing technology for footwear design. Besides this minor hiccup I am quiet happy with the overall design concept and how the shoe looked.
