G Star Footwear

Mark Kokavec, who studied at both the automotive and product design at the College for Creative Studies of Detroit, has over 12 years of experience and designed shoes for Reebok, Converse and Under Armour. He currently works at Under Armour as a Senior Manager for Footwear Design and operation of outdoor categories.

In 2008, he founded Render Demo Design Studio Edition DVD video tutorials to educate designers and artists to design and make shoes in Illustrator, Photoshop and Alias Sketchbook.

Mark will host two workshops featuring Adobe Illustrator District Conference IDSA Northwest during 27-29 March in Cambridge MA.

First, thank you Mark for taking the time to provide the first interview here at Product Design Hub.

Could you please tell us a little about your background, what made you become a designer of shoes?

Thank you for allowing me to share my experiences with your readers!

My path to becoming a designer of shoes started the College for Creative Studies Detroit, Michigan. I studied Automotive Design for the past few years and is in product design in order to broaden my design skills. I've always been interested in footwear and has been one of the first students to register for interviews at the Reebok came on a national recruitment search. I was the chief designer for their type of tennis that I have a great passion for. I was able to design products for Venus Williams, Michael Chang, Andy Roddick, Patrick Rafter and many other professional tennis players. After six years, I moved to Converse in an effort to build their division basketball. I worked very closely with Chris Bosh, Kirk Hinrich and especially ... Dwyane Wade. I designed all of the basketball shoe that led to his first signature shoe, which I helped manage and develop.

After 3 years I have been approached by Under Armour to help build the group design of the shoe. I was the second designer shoes for the company. I am currently the head of the race and outdoor categories.

Could you describe your work flow and design tools?

I went completely digital! From concept design to final design reports. Everything is done digitally using an Apple MacBook Pro, Wacom Cintiq, and monitor programs Photoshop, Illustrator and Sketchbook Pro.

Where is your inspiration from?

I am inspired by many things, but my main inspiration comes from the automotive and Motion Picture Industries. I like the aggressiveness of sports cars, especially BMW, combined with the creative imagination of artists in the entertainment industry inspires me.

What is your favorite cleaner design and why?

The design I'm most proud of is the one I created at Under Armour a„c. This is the first basketball shoe and Under Armour will not be sold at retail. It's exciting because this is the first shoe to them and the fact that you can not buy it makes it really special. An up and coming rising star Brandon Jennings was named the door.

What is your favorite design and why?

It's a tough question! I really like the Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman. What intrigues me most about the Eames brothers was that they were always on the cutting edge of design and the source of many innovative technologies we commonly use today. This chair is next on my list to buy for my office.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of being a shoe designer?

There are many advantages. both rapid product turnaround. You are always working on a new project, because it takes about 15 months from detailed sketches, and you have four seasons of launch dates. Once you start a new project, you're in the middle of last season and you're finalizing the b.