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Maybe its just the photos, but those new spanky's are absolute turds. They look like airspeeds or some other non-descript big box 'skate shoe' but with an emerica logo slapped on the side. They have none of the charm of a reebok club c or 80s era tennis/court shoe - aside from the woven label on the tongue. Emerica needs to do better, much better.
Is this any better?
While these photos are more flattering, I still don't consider this to be a good execution. I find the design quite boring and very cheap looking. More importantly, it lacks the charm and character of the era it’s trying to reference... If it were a faithful, period-correct homage in its execution, I would give it more leeway for the lack of originality. But as it stands, it looks like a cheap shoe trying to reference a past era without understanding what made that era compelling. There is very little here from a design value perspective.
The Reynolds shaped cutout with the logo printed in the middle is arguably the worst possible logo execution they could have chosen. This was a perfect opportunity to experiment with branding, or to just use a bit more finesse and taste to make it look more considered and less of an afterthought.
Clearly they are reusing the tooling from the mute shoe to get more milage out of the molds, but my criticism for the sole remains the same even on the mute - This is just a badly designed sole unit, doesn't matter what upper you out on top of it, from a design and form standpoint - its unremarkable, and not nearly good enough to warrant opening a full size run of molds for.
As a whole, this is not a successful shoe design in my eyes. If I really wanted to be an assh*le, I could honestly nitpick every single decision that was made during the design process. I understand that budget is always a factor, but making a tasteful shoe that gives the impression of value is still possible. It just requires a better understanding of form, and realistically, more artistic talent.
Topic: Emerica containment thread (Read 171346 times)