A Q&A with Footwear Designer Charlotte Logeais
Spotlight articles shine a light on designers and design materials we admire. Our founder and principal designer Rebeccah Pailes-Friedman has met many wonderful designers as an educator and career designer, and in our Spotlight interviews we ask them about their work and their design journey. In this interview we spoke with senior footwear designer and art director Charlotte Logeais. Charlotte has been a designer at Nike* for over two years. She began in the kids division and is currently a senior designer on the Women’s Lifestyle team. To her, design has always been about storytelling and problem solving. With a bachelor’s degree in industrial design from Pratt Institute and a Master’s degree from USC integrating design, business, and technology, she is well versed in the power of design as well as the power of style. Her experience as a professional ballet dancer gave her an athlete’s mindset, and she knows the value of performance footwear firsthand. We asked her about the challenges of footwear design, emerging trends in the footwear industry, and what makes a great shoe.
Q: What is inspiring you at the moment?
A: The biggest thing that’s inspiring me at the moment are fashion week runway shows. I love seeing all the runway collections and how each designer creates their own world while still aligning with the history of the brand. I also enjoy seeing how the runway trickles down into street style.
Q: Could you tell us about your role at Nike? How do you fit into your team there?
A: I work on the Nike kids design team. I’m technically on the performance side, but the cool thing about the kids team—especially for me, being newer to the footwear industry—is that you get to work on a broad range of products. I’ve been able to work on lifestyle shoes, like the Air Max 1, and on performance product as well, like running. It’s been great to get to work on such a wide range of products and it’s helped me discover what I’m most passionate about. It’s been a great team to first start on at Nike.
On the kids team you can push the boundaries a little bit more and really have fun with the design. Kids love bright colors, they love shoes that are playful and energetic. They get super excited about designs that are colorful and vibrant – it’s the first thing they notice about a shoe.
In footwear, we work two years out. The process is kicked off by a brief and then the design team begins pulling inspiration and sketching. Various priorities in the product brief will inspire the visual direction of the design. If it’s a shoe that needs to emphasize comfort, it’s probably going to be a more rounded form language. If it needs to emphasize speed, maybe it’s more angular. Those notes help us determine the visual language.
My favorite part of the product creation process is when the team comes together to sketch together on a new project. It’s the most creative time we have each season. We go find a room—the whole kids team—and we sketch together all day for a couple of weeks on the projects of the season. Then each project lead will take all of those sketches, identify the common threads, and bring it to the finish line.
Once the design has been finalized, we send out a tech pack and get our first samples back to revise.
Q: What drew you to footwear design?
A: I kind of stumbled upon it, which is funny considering I grew up in Portland, Nike’s backyard. When I was at Pratt doing my undergrad degree, I applied to a footwear design internship at Adidas and interned with them for six months. I’d never really sketched sneakers before and fell in love with it during that internship. I’ve always loved fashion and sport, and did classical ballet for 10 years, culminating in one year professionally before going to Pratt. In ballet, your feet are your main tool, but pointe shoes have barely evolved since the 19th century. So it’s rewarding for me to be able to bring innovation to athletes through footwear design.
Q: Of the skills that you learned at Pratt, which do you find most valuable in your work?
A: Design thinking is a big one, and the design process overall. In footwear, we’re given a product brief by our marketing team. That brief tells us who the consumer is, what they’re looking for, and what the priorities of the product need to be. Then it’s the designer’s job to take that information and create a design. At Pratt it was definitely drilled into us that you get your brief, you find inspiration, you sketch, you refine your idea, you present it, and then begin the development process.
Q: Footwear is an industry known for inspiring cult followings. What are your main challenges as a footwear designer?
A: Being on the kids team is definitely a design challenge for me. I’m not the target consumer, and I think it’s a big challenge to design for someone who isn’t you while still wanting to imbue the project with your personal aesthetic and sensibility. It’s a good challenge: to keep the consumer at the center of the product while still being able to bring in my perspective. Whenever we get to interact directly with the consumer it helps us to understand what they want from a product. As the kids team covers toddler through grade school, it’s a pretty large range and we have to tailor each design to what the specific age group needs.
Q: From a personal standpoint, what makes a great shoe? One you’re excited to wear?
A: For me, comfort is a huge thing. I want a shoe that I can wear all day long and it will be super comfortable. Also, a shoe that feels versatile and can transition between working all day at the office to going out for a drink or going to a pilates class. Having a shoe that can move with you throughout the day and keep you comfortable the whole day is the biggest thing for me. Beyond that, I like having some sort of icon on the shoe, a hero aspect of the shoe.
The shoes that I’ve been wearing the most right now are the Vomero 5s, they’re an old school running shoe that have now pivoted into lifestyle.
Q: How does sustainability factor into design and production at Nike?
A: Sustainability is definitely a big priority. As a designer, I partner with material and color designers, and materials are usually the biggest sustainability play. We’ll often make sure to prioritize materials that have a certain percentage of recycled content to try to reduce the amount of new materials being brought in and reuse as much as possible. That’s a big priority, especially in the kids business. I think we’re one of the teams that is making the biggest effort with that. The youngest consumer really does care about the environment and about what their future is going to look like, so sustainability is especially important for them, and knowing that we also care.
Q: What do you see as interesting emerging trends in the footwear industry today?
A: Some of the biggest trends are new digital tools. AI has been a huge one, getting to input a prompt and have ideas generated for you, often ideas that you couldn’t imagine or that are just super out there. AI is a powerful initial ideation tool for brainstorming and creating concepts. Midjourney is one of my favorites right now, I actually discovered it while pursuing my master’s at USC.
In the past, I’d just go on Pinterest and scroll for aesthetically pleasing imagery to create a mood board, but now you can create your own imagery for that mood board through AI. It makes each mood board a bit more unique, and you have the control to create the imagery that you want to work with. Now I do a bit of a combination of both, searching for inspiration images as well as generating them myself. I still do love Pinterest though… and I have so many boards.
Q: Are there other areas of design you would like to explore?
A: I purchased an apartment last May and have spent the last seven months renovating it. It’s in a hundred-year-old loft building in downtown Portland and it was a blank canvas, so I did all the interior design for it, working with the contractor and everything. That’s been a journey! But, It’s super rewarding to see it come together. The results of interior design are so physical. Whatever decision you make, you’re going to see it in real life. That has so much impact. Interior design is something that I’ve discovered I really enjoy doing, and I would love to do more projects like this.
Being in footwear, I’ve realized that lines are so important to me, when things align and how they are offset from each other. I think I’m driving my contractor a little bit insane, making sure everything is perfectly aligned and organized. Design to me is seeing how forms have relationships and fit together.
Footwear designers look at trends and forecasting. We are tied to the fashion world, so part of the job is keeping up with that, seeing what people are drawn to, whether that’s in person or through social media. On the performance side, we follow the different sporting events. In the NBA, there’s an interesting intersection of style and sport every time the athletes walk down the tunnel onto the court. Following influencers on Instagram is another good way to keep up with global fashion trends. Maybe I like their style or the way that they combine different clothing items in unexpected ways. Following those creators helps me stay connected to fashion and innovation. When I lived in New York, I could just go for a walk and see amazing street style everywhere. Living in Portland that’s a bit more difficult, so I rely on travel and Instagram.
Q: What do you see for yourself as a designer and for your career going forward?
A: I feel like I’m just getting started in footwear but I see a long future for myself in the industry. I’d love to work on more adult performance product.
I also value having my own design pursuits on the side, like interior design. I used to paint a lot and that’s fallen off in the past couple of years. I think it’s important to find the time to keep yourself fulfilled, to have those external pursuits that don’t involve the pressure to perform as much as your day-to-day work. The renovation project has been taking all of my energy so I think, once that is finished, I can find time to paint again. I also used to meditate every morning and I haven’t done that in a while. For me, finding the time for mindfulness and sport helps me stay balanced.
*Views are her own and do not reflect those of her employer.
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