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History of Shoe Design & Manufacturing
History of Shoe Design & Manufacturing
Did you know that making shoes used to be a highly individualized process for mostly rich people?
Women have traditionally done the sewing that men have attached to the soles. Charles Goodyear, a self-taught chemist and inventor, was obsessed with finding a way to stabilize rubber so that it could be used for shoes, clothing, and dishes. His breakthrough with rubber experimentation helped pave the way for the tennis shoe, the first iteration of the sneaker in the 1870’s.
Another inspired inventor, Bill Bowerman, co-founder of Nike, poured melted urethane onto his family waffle iron to make the tread for lightweight running shoes.
Jan Ernst Matzeliger was the black inventor who created a machine that upped the production of shoes from 50 to 700 shoes a day. In 1946 Injection molding became popular way to use heat-softened plastic to make foot wear and footwear parts such as Dauphant’s jellies.
How To Make A Shoe
How To Make A Shoe
Making a shoe is outlined wonderfully in this wiki, https://www.wikihow.com/Make-Shoes.
Artists need to design a shoe by creating a template for materials, build a last, the word used for a mold made of the foot usually with a foot cast, then cut and sew materials around the cast, and attach them to a sole. Beginner artists can harvest an old shoe’s parts to save some time.
Another shoe artist describes her process with photographs as taking 33 steps in under 20 hours and less than $50 on this website, https://www.instructables.com/Make-Your-Own-Shoes-at-Home/.
3-D Printed Footwear
3-D Printed Footwear
Companies like Adidas and Nike have been experimenting with 3D printed footwear for a while, starting with parts of sneakers, like the soles. Newer companies like Zellerfeld, FUSED, Hilos, and SCRY™ Lab, headed by Zixiong Wei, are using 3D printing to create the whole shoe. 3D printing is a way for designers and companies to create customizable, on demand footwear. They are able to do that with a lower carbon footprint because there is less waste and the FDM 3D printed footwear is completely recyclable. There is also a lower cost to 3D printing because there are no manufacturing costs for new molds or tooling specific to a certain sneaker. It’s not just sneakers that are being 3D printed. Casual and dress styles are printed and even ballet pointe shoes by act’ble.
Wei says of this new approach to designing and manufacturing footwear “For us, the future lies within customization, on-demand manufacturing, low design threshold and ultra-high, design iteration capabilities. 3D printing is just one technology we are using at the moment, but there are going to be more. What we really seek to explore is how to simplify traditional footwear manufacturing processes from the beginning to the end of the product life cycle.”
Designers are still seeking ways to use sustainable materials from everything from mushrooms to cork and bamboo. However, having a product that can dissolve into the environment makes it less durable for customer use and less appealing to collectors. Finding the right balance will be a challenge for future designers.
Sneakers that are not even real have been sold for $3.1 million by 18-year-old designer FEWOCiOUS. NFT sneakers are online images that became popular when an image of Elon Musk wearing a pair of Cyber Sneakers inspired by his Tesla Cybertruck went viral. Collectors could only purchase a part of the blockchain with cryptocurrency.
Sources
Sources
Explore these subjects more by following the sources we used or through your own research
Future Now: Virtual Sneakers to Cutting-Edge Kicks by: Elizabeth Semmelhack
Future Now: Virtual Sneakers to Cutting-Edge Kicks by: Elizabeth Semmelhack
https://diving-into-digital.hypebae.com/conversations/scry-lab-interviews-sneakers-experts-trends/
https://3dspro.com/resources/blog/the-rise-of-3d-printed-shoes
Other info on 3D printed footwear:
https://3dspro.com/resources/blog/the-rise-of-3d-printed-shoes
Videos:
Tour of Zellerfeld Shoe Company 3d printing shoe process
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