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BUY SHOES

AUGUST 13, 2009
Hey kids - put on some clean socks and hurry into your local shoe store....

The timing was right when I recently showed some new work (my Leo style) to a friend in town. She is a designer for Dockers shoes and thought my work was a perfect fit for a project they were about to start. They were designing the shoebox and tissue wrap for their line of boy's shoes.

Many shoe companies are now using the tissue that wraps the shoes as a sort of marketing tool - anything to communicate the message... For example, Timberland has their thing - but it is just a repeated pattern of woodsy elements. Paula Hyde, the Dockers' designer extraordinaire, envisioned this could be pushed further.

The concept: illustrated trivia and interesting facts that boys might find interesting - and tie in to the overall feel of their brand. Also - to give the shoe buyers something to really look at - and want to read, and perhaps even fight over. (kidding).

The concept for the box design started as an image for the inside of the lid - illustrated ideas for what boys might keep inside the box once they brought it home, complete with copy that reads, "This box belongs to _____" (your name here, kid...). But the Dockers folks loved the illustrations so much (rumor), they incorporated them into the overall box design itself (see figure 3.a, vol II, subsection 4).
The final tissue is printed with a light metallic blue ink on a tan / creme colored stock - really tasty - but tough to scan and translate here... hope this photo does it.
Some details...
...details...
One more...
This is the illustration for the bottom of the box.
Some of my early ideas were a bit too fictional, or made-up. We then focused on more fact based items, which in turn influenced the graphic approach to be a bit more realistic.
Some tissue roughs... The World's Largest Screwdriver did NOT make the cut.
A few more photos...
Shows over. Class dismissed.
© 2024 John S. Dykes