Inspiration from Palm Trees
Some years ago, on one of my earliest visits to the Philippines, I spent an hour or so taking photographs of some towering palm trees that were alongside a beach in Puerto Princesa, Palawan. I remember that they looked quite magnificent against the cloudless blue backdrop of sky.
Fast forward a couple of years, and I was experimenting with the photos, making posterised effects, and then progressing to trying various colour combinations.
It was around this time that I was getting involved with creating designs for Zazzle. I had a hunch that the colourful palm tree designs I had made would look effective on the shoes. I got to work and started adding my images to the shoe elements - left side, right side, rear, tongue, ensuring that the left and right shoe mirrored each other. Once the shoe looked good, I made it available for sale from my online store.
So there it was - a shoe with my design, totally unique. Something that one would not find available in any shopping mall!
I then set about adding the other colour combinations to my collection, as well as additional footwear types, increasing the choice available, but keeping the overall theme.
Zazzle does something quite brilliantly. When they know you have a product with the same basic design, but in a number of different colour-ways, they indicate that alongside, and the colours link to the variations. For example, here's what you will see on the product page I linked to above:
Here are a few examples of the shoes I have so far designed...
Designing for shoes would have been farthest from my mind while on that deserted Philippines beach taking my photographs. However I am glad that those pictures eventually gave me the inspiration to create the colourful patterns that you see now. You can view the full range of shoes in my Zazzle collection...
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