Promising Practice Share:

Shoe Design

Rachel Cabrera

Visual Arts Teacher

Pan American International High Schools, 24Q296

Class: Studio Art (First year of art experience in high school)

Grade: 9-10 Mixed

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Performance Task

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What is the Performance Task?

In this Unit, students studied graphic and fashion design careers, specifically for apparel and shoes. In this project students took on the role of a company designer. Their company received four perspective ‘clients’ each with a specific creative brief to address. Students divided into teams based on their chosen brief and addressed the client’s specific directives. With constructive support from their team, each student prepared a unique shoe design. Students began with mindmapping as a planning technique to generate unique ideas and inspiration. They sketched their designs by altering the form and surface of different blank shoe templates. They revised their final designs with support from peers. Finally, students recorded a video ‘pitch’ to fulfill that creative brief and present to the client as their final project. Students used digital drawing tools such as Chrome Canvas and Procreate to complete their designs. Student work was showcased in the school art show and the class was able to participate in a design collaboration with Nike and All the Right.

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Criteria for Assessment

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What are the criteria for the task?

The criteria with which the performance task will be assed are:

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• Fulfilling the Creative Brief - How well does the students design and pitch respond to the directives and needs of the client they chose? How well can students explain and justify their creative choices?

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• Design - How does the design incorporate unity, variety, balance, contrast and line.

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• Digital Drawing Skills - Is the design presented with neatness and craftsmanship using the digital design drawing tools.

Learning Objectives

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• Awareness of careers in Visual arts. Research online visual arts and design career of graphic and apparel design , what that program of study looks like? What does this career look like?
• Understand how artists create the design and layout of this product
• Create a design that demonstrates selective use of the elements of art and principals of design, synthesizing them into a unified work with a clear theme.
• Ability to navigate a digital drawing program and demonstrate a synthesis of technology and principles of design.

Literacy Element

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Skills within different language modalities were addressed throughout the unit including:

• Use of target unit vocabulary
• Reading, responding and analyzing text and videos as text
• Self reflections and constructive peer critiques (written and speaking)
• Explaining/justifying design choices
• Writing and recording a spoken “pitch” presentation for the client.

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Examples of some student facing activities from start of unit including the description of the creatives briefs are in the following slides. All creative briefs in the activity guide were color coded to help students continue their work independently in google classroom.

Identifying Gaps in Learning�

I noticed some gaps in performance throughout the project and used different scaffold questions (as found in the planning document) as well as consistent formative feedback to push student growth and learning in these areas.

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• Use of simplistic, stereotypical, literal imagery. For example :
• a plain rectangle flag stuck on the side of a shoe
• a heart
• a “Broccoli” tree or a “sheep” cloud rather than a more specific shape
• For the fan merchandise brief, not just copying a google image of a character from the show/game but synthesizing multiple images and symbols into a unique design and/or using elements of the character such as textures, colors etc to symbolically represent them.

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• Aesthetic Design gaps. This included:
• not considering the form of the shoe when applying imagery or linework
• not changing the surface or form of the shoe template in a significant way
• Not treating text as a DESIGN element that needs a style/font and layout that could support their theme
• leaving a lot of empty space in the design with small symbols randomly placed around the surface of the shoe
• ignoring balance, contrast, linear flow in their design etc. These are design elements we have learned in previous units and have been reinforcing throughout the year.

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• Not addressing aspects of the creative brief . Or, the student’s theme is not clear from the design and the student is unable to explain the purpose behind their creative choices and how it relates to their theme or brief.

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(Examples on Next page)

Ex: Student just wrote “DR” and with feedback was able to consider the letters as part of his design and choose a style that represented Dominican culture for him.

Ex: In the first design, the student’s concept of representing Ecuador was unclear and there fore she was not fufilling the creative brief. The non specific trees and butterflies relied on stereotypical forms and could have represented any country’s environment. With feedback, they added a specific animal and some waterfalls and mountains unique to the country she chose.

Ex: Design gaps , had small, stereotypical symbols that were not thoughtfully placed and a lot of empty space. In second design their idea is clearer, unique, satisfies the creative brief and makes better use of the surface of the shoe (line of text, pattern in bottom of shoe taken from the pattern in the monument of santiago tower, filling the shoe with elements of the flag rather than just a tiny flag.

Ex: The theme of the student’s design was not immediately clear and therefore the shoe was not meeting the creative brief. With further detail and development it became clearer what tv show the student was merchandising.

Student Work Samples

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Please enjoy this gallery of some final projects completed by the Students including their shoes designs and their video pitches.

Creative Brief 1: Personal Identity Brand

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CREATIVE BRIEF 2: SUSTAINABILITY INSPIRED DESIGN

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CREATIVE BRIEF 3: COUNTRY INSPIRED SHOE

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Creative Brief 4: FAN MERCHANDISE

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Click the Photos to See Videos of Student Pitches

Collaboration with “All the Right”

VIDEO created by All the Right of the Student and Nike/All the Right Collaboration

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All the Right is a neighborhood maninstay--a latino owned family operated streetwear store located down the street from our school on Corona Avenue. They are a shop deeply rooted in hip-hop an graffiti culture, community, and juxtaposition of art and fashion.

Through the help of our teacher/dean Mr Espaillat, All the Right collaborated with our art class to celebrate the launch of the Rebellion Nike Shoe and sent a film crew to pitch a concept to our kids: “What does being a rebel mean to you?” The students conceptualized and then sketched a shoe or apparel item in response to the prompt. Having participated in this unit, our students were more than up to the task.

Students were invited to visit the shop and spoke with designers. The student designs were showcased in the store at the launch party for the rebellion shoe and select winning designers received their own pair of the limited edition shoes! Designs were also showcased in our school art show.