#4) PEAK Basketball Design Concept

Designer: Melvin Melchor

Shoe name: PEAK The FORMula

Design description: In order to improve, one must practice. Countless hours of free throws, jumpers, footwork, drills, watching film, maintaining, proper nutrition and fitness, etc. These fundamentals can eventually produce results, like a sweet shooting form.

Similarly, I looked at repetition of form, such as pleated folds, to construct a sort of glove/sock like fit for an upper. I wanted it to be able to conform to the foot. Greater frequency of pleats are folded behind each other in needed areas of support and structure. The red area is pleated for heel and forefoot, while the grey is for the lateral. I wanted to create a one piece upper for the most part, with an inner liner for comfort against possible rubbing.

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Design feedback by Brett Golliff:

Melvin, you found some great inspiration for an excellent story and performance feature but what you lacked was providing the simplest way of accomplishing that inspiration.

What makes your inspiration amazing is the complex simplicity they all represent, sounds like an oxymoron right? What I mean by that is that they all take a very unique and simple form but use very complex techniques to accomplish them. Your design needs to use that same balance. It’s the complexity in the pleating that you should have celebrated as opposed to providing a bright and bold colorway.

I also think your balancing of the forms needed work. You have very simple and flowing lines in your upper that don’t communicate well with the midsole and the sole unit. The midsole in my opinion should have been used to compliment the upper and I think you had the right idea of making the sole unit very unique and bold but it looks very congested and over done. I would suggest referencing back to your inspiration and trying to simplify while still meeting the performance needs of the athlete.

Design feedback by Trung Tran:

I really like this entry. I love how Melvin’s story starts from the idea of repetition on the court and carries that over to repetition of form and folds. He chose great images to represent the patience, craftsmanship and dedication it takes to create something stunning like those paper sculptures. Those artists are “crazy” to me and there is some of that same craziness in athletes dedicating most of their teenage and young adult life to constantly push and better themselves. There is something very fascinating and admirable about people willing to repeat something over and over relentlessly to perfect a craft. It’s a great story.

The concept and general idea are very cool and unique, but I was kind of left hoping for more. It’s hard to see on his second page where and how he decided to pleat the material for support. The color blocking takes away from the natural aesthetics of the pleats. The lighting on that white paper sculpture on the corner of page 1 is really cool. I think a tonal colorway that would have let light and shadow show the pleats’ layering and geometry would have been much more dramatic. The midsole is rough and not as dynamic as some of the sketches. The pods/craters on the outsole add some dimension and highlight key areas but the tooling is still raw and unrefined. I would have liked to see him do his final rendering by hand. Melvin can sketch well, but his digital skills aren’t as good and it ends up taking away from his design.

I definitely think it is a concept that Melvin should continue to develop more beyond this competition because it could make a good portfolio piece.