Footwear Design Course Is Now Open And First Tip to Get You Started

Today I'm finally launched my Footwear design course: Knowledge -Technique – Freedom , and I'm very excited as this is very close to my heart, footwear design is what I do. The course is open for new members and will be 9-10 lessons long, you can find all the information at
 

            Design Courses Is  Now Open
  

It took me a long time to prepare this one, as I did wanted to make it special and resourceful, excluding all the unnecessary information and digging into my own brain and my own work to find the answers.  As a designer I am always looking for ways to express myself through my footwear design in any shape and in those 6 weeks intensively preparing for this design course, talking design, putting myself under a spot light, asking myself questions , something that I don't normally do. I want to share a tip, that will help you and hopefully even change your perspective on creating your design.

Analyzing myself trying to find working pattern in my work, something that I use always and can't do without I found one dominant thing  and it is  "Activation Words". My Freehand Pattern technique helps a lot to use them and I personally see them as inseparable. It give me the edge and support to find the form that I'm need during creation. Although I hate systematic thinking and equations that is what I found working for me.

Activation words + Freehand Technique = Design

What is activation words? When you describe exact object that you want to create you doom yourself to create this exact object, for example- you want to design flat ballet shoes with bow on the top. That is exactly what you will get.
But using activation words like : Volume, texture, inside out, elastic, blending, interlacing etc.  You free yourself from done objects and you open your work for the creative process that will lead you to create much more than just a ballets with a bow. Understand what quality your shoes should obtain and through technique discover the opportunity of this in design.  

 More information at www.shoemakingcoursesonline.com

Kind regards,

Sveta Kletina

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Shoemaking Online Courses Registration Is Now Open!

Three weeks have passed since my last post and the reason for that is that I was a very busy bee, and this time it's all doing with MAKING SHOES BLOG. Now when my collection is ready and it's on a roll, I am fully committed to you my dear readers.
In my last post I announced that I'm planning an online shoemaking courses, and the feedback that I got from all of you was incredible, you helped me understand what courses are needed, and some of them were way far from my primary plan. Since then I'm tightly working on the courses, and they building up in this massive stream of content that I'm very confident and excited about.
So, here we are three weeks later and I'm super stoked to announce

MAKING SHOES ONLINE COURSES REGISTRATION IS NOW OPEN

Day 5 : Here’s a Quick Way To Make Homemade Leather Print

The marathon week is came to an end and today I have the last tutorial from this series for you. I hope this week was beneficial and real kind of a marathon for you, it was sure a race for me, making those tutorials every day and I'm sure my family will appreciate the fact that it is all over now. Although it was not a simple task, I really wanted to make things more clear, and that each chapter from the book will be perfectly explained in details. I will continue to explore the chapters from the book in the community page at Google+, so we could move on, and I do have exciting plans for the near future  but let's keep it till the next post.

Day 2: How to adopt your design to Golden points by bending some rules?

 

Knowing the gold points is surely makes your life as designer or shoemaker much easier but knowing them, memorizing them will not solve your problem unless you making the same boot over and over again. You must know how to use this knowledge, to create your own formulas, because each design that you may have will extend the possibilities that those points gives you, and you need to know how to fix it. One thing for sure, it comes with experience and creative approach, not to mention other aspects that are influence your design, like type and correctness of the last you use, type of leather, it could be too thick, to stretched, no stretched the best advice I can give you is, learn it, use it, make it your own.

Here are couple questions and answers that emerged from the book:

•  How to stay in the safe area (golden points) but exceed the classic last borders. (from chapter 2 , 4)

Visually divide the last into equal segments, so you will be able to work in the last proportions:

For example: Let's say I want to make asymmetric Channel shoes with geometric forms in the pattern. To do it I visually divided the last into 4 even segments, that are created by lines LM,KK1 ( middle of the last length), FC.

By creating volume in the heel( 2 segments- LM, KK1) I need to make this volume equal in other two segments KK1, CF according to the geometric forms of the pattern.

As you see, by doing this I work according to the rules of Golden points and I divide the last into proportional segments that are helping me to extend the boundaries of the last and in the same time staying in the last proportions. That's what I call bending the rules.

•  Selectively chose the gold points that you need to work with your design 

Shoemaking Marathon Week: Day One

After a lot of writing and answering questions for the past week, I decided that few actions need to be done. A lot of questions regarding the "Shoemaking & Techniques for Creative Footwear Design" book evolved in areas and directions that I didn't thought of them , but it is alright and I'm here to explore the book more thoroughly.
Because, nobody wants to read this post for an hour, and because I didn't wrote everything yet, and still thinking of how to explain some of the questions that you asked me or you may ask in the future, we will do it a whole week.
Here is what we will be exploring for the next three days:

* Day one: The most asked about chapter is chapter 2, the "Golden points". So, for the day one (today) I will be doing tutorial on" How to properly construct the Boot pattern according to gold points". 

* Day two : (Hello chapter 2, again) " How to adopt your design to Golden points by bending some rules". This one is for those of you who struggle with strict rules of pattern making. When your vision of design is way different from what the golden points are, and you know that if you break them, you will have some issues with your shoes. I will show you how to fix it in more creative and professional way.

* Day three: Since the chapter 6, (How to build an entire collection just with 2 types of lasts) "made the day" for some of you and that fact made my day as well, I wanted to extend this chapter ideas and that's what we going to do on the third day, " How to transform your sandal last into platform sandal last".

This is the schedule for next three days, and the rest will be updated, you are welcome to add your own questions that you had from the book, and I will try to include them as well.