Hurray, hurray, hurray! On June 24 the first seven graduates of the new Industrial Footwear Design course received their diplomas! For decades there were hardly any possibilities to get an education for footwear design in The Netherlands. Three enthusiasts - Liesel Swart (freelance designer and teacher in traditional shoe making), Hester Vlamings (freelance designer and owner of her
own footwear line) and Nicoline van Enter (owner of footwear forecasting agency
Ytrends) - had been striving for years to start a professional course and in 2009 they found a good partner in the Dutch Healthtec Academy, an institute that also gives courses for orthopedic shoe making and hand crafted footwear.
Practical classesTo guarantee an optimal connection with the industry, students were taught all necessary skills during several real assignments for international footwear companies, like Fornarina, Sacha Shoes, Le Coq Sportif and Durea, covering both women's and men's fashion and casual footwear, sneakers and comfort shoes. They not only took classes in footwear design, but also in footwear construction, material, costing, trend research, sketching, communication and Photoshop/Illustrator. Whenever possible, samples of their designs were produced and discussed, to stay as close to reality as possible.
Graduation ProjectsFor graduation, they each had to do two projects: a commercial assignment which involved designing two groups of three styles based on a brief given by a company, and a free assignment which involved designing two groups of each three styles based on a brief made by themselves, either for their own collection or for a brand they admire. Each assignment had to involve trend and brand research, professional design sketches showing all angles of the designs, colour and material proposals and spec sheets.
PortfoliosThe purpose was that upon graduation each student would have a professional portfolio to show to a potential employer or customer, including the graduation assignments and all other projects done during the course. You can find these portfolios below. If you click on them, you can see them full screen. The first page features an introduction of each designer and the report of the graduation committee and the final page contains their contact details. Most of them are open for job offers or freelance projects!
Apply for the courseIf you are interested in taking the course, you can find more information
here. The next edition starts in September 2010 and will be finished in June 2011; classes are each Thursday from 2pm to 8:30 pm. We are still taking applications until August 2!
