Year: 2014
I was asked to make a pair of custom shoes with speakers in them for Budlight so they could award it to a contest winner.  The client had nothing more than a napkin sketch for me showing that they’d like a speaker design on the sole – that’s it.  No idea of what kind of shoes or any other design aspects, so it was on me to design and produce the shoes.  Now I’d say something about how crazy it is to just make a pair of shoes… but I guess I already have with the flesh shoe so I really can’t pretend to be new at this.

The shoes are bluetooth, so they wirelessly connect to a phone, and then the person wearing them can play music and the sound comes out of the shoe. They also have lights on the side that flash in sync with the music.  It may sound silly, and it frankly is, but imagine sitting down, throwing your feet up onto the table, and blasting your favourite tunes out of them to everyone else sitting there.

I designed the shoe sole on the computer in 3D and then made out of multiple types of silicone rubbers. It was a bit of a test as in the end I only had a week to pull it off.  The project had been briefed to me with 4 weeks to go, but unfortunately the shoe size they needed didn’t come in till the last week so I was on hold a bit.  It would have been wonderful to just produce multiple sizes, but the budget wasn’t big enough to accomplish that.  All that being said, I think it turned out OK considering the limitations.  I’m a bit of a perfectionist though, and think with a proper timeline they could have been even better.

In action..