This fabric is made for walking

This week's design challenge was in concert with a shoe company called Milk + Honey, to make a small-scale geometric print that could be used on shoes. Milk + Honey are picking from among the top ten vote-getters to actually put on shoes they'll produce.

For the geometric layout, I really like sashiko designs, and was originally going to go with the classic interlocking circles pattern you see everywhere, but then I noticed that even the example shoe in the contest announcement used it. I used a variation instead, where the circles are replaced by octagons, and it looks like this.

Since the middle segments look like stars, I decided to try using the Synergy group "star" palette, which are not normally colors I'd gravitate towards, but figured it would be a fun exercise if nothing else. I tried to make it look a little bit crystalline, like the prismatic effect you get through cut glass.



This came in 279 out of a whopping 495 entries, with 70 votes. Boy howdy did it take a long time to get through the voting! There were indeed several entries that used the interlocking circles - my favorites were the poppy-colored and aqua gradient versions. Gems were also a big theme: in bubbly circles of all sizes (came in fifth), serene graphics, exuberant wireframes, and emerald dots. Many people tried to work in as many colors as possible, in circle segments (came in sixth), lozenges (came in ninth) and pixels. Other designs I really liked were this wiggly zig-zag, folksy patchwork, linen-textured motifs, Death-Star-like windows, and blackwork. The entry I'd probably most like on a pair of shoes were the buckyballs, or possibly the sequins.