About

Vans, based in Santa Ana, California, is an American shoe manufacturer. The shoes they produce are for skateboarding and other related apparel. Vans is owned by the VF corporation; however, the company helps out with other companies such as Surf, Snowboarding, BMX and many motocross teams by sponsoring them. Vans “off the wall” was founded 16^th March 1966 by the brothers Paul Van Doren, James Van Doren and Gordon C. Lee when they opened their first ever Vans store, selling shoes directly to the public by the name of ‘The Van Doren Rubber Company’. They began by selling shoes to just 12 customers, to now selling out worldwide. The Vans company has and continues to be the primary sponsor of the annual Vans Warped Tour travelling rock festival, since 1996. Here is an image of their first store that again, opened in March 1966:

Here is an image of one of the first Vans shoes created, which soon became the ‘shoe of choice’ for the skaters and is now known as the ‘Era’ Vans:

MY CONCEPT –

‘EMO’ VS VANS

I have decided to use this platform as an opportunity to shine the focus on the fellow emo selection of the public that love vans more than the VF Corporation themselves. My target audience will be leaning towards the alternative crowd of people, at any age. The types of people that appreciate the thought and detail gone into the David Bowie and Nightmare Before Christmas collab Vans.

I became aware that on the Vans official purchasing web page you are given the chance to customise your own shoes that fit your taste the most. Below are a few I came up with:

ALL DESIGNS WERE MADE ON; https://www.vans.co.uk/customs-mens.html .

I also formed a quick concept of an alternative style vans shoes on Adobe Photoshop, using genre of music to help: My Chemical Romance was known in the emo/ Gothic industry of music and became very popular and was named the ‘superstars of the 21^st century’. A huge amount of the public fell in devastation when coming to terms with the band break up. I feel this shoe design will fulfil fans who enjoy the same genre of music, with relief if these designed shoes became known:

One of the original style of pattern people used to draw onto their plain vans when they first launched was chequered. This has become an ‘edgy’ trend in the 21^st century and has rapidly grown popularity since which is why I have incorporated this into my second experiment:

I did some quick further research to have a look at other people’s attempts at designing My Chemical Romance styled vans and out of all of them, these were my favourite. They are simple yet so effective and to say they have coloured them in and not created this on a software reflects on the level of design this person is at:

Here are some Bring Me the Horizon styled vans I created. I feel as though they’ve been a band that people have been in and out of fandom with. Their genre and choice of music has differed a lot over the years and I feel that the majority of their fan base preferred their heavier music and will appreciate the Sempiternal album logo being collided into these vans:

Lil peep has been described as an ‘Emo rapper’ which has recently been the new popular genre for Gothic/emo and alternative music. Sound-cloud rappers have overcome a lot of the original emo bands, especially since 2017. Peep passed away on the 15^th November 2017, this news broke many hearts across the world of rap and their fan base. I feel like these shoes would be a warming way of honouring his memory as peep was well known for his ‘edgy’ style of clothing and already released a range of his own clothing before the tragedy of his passing. He was known for being outgoing in terms of design and colour which is why I went with black, baby pink and a sketchy style when designing these vans:

I was made aware of the ‘emo trinity/quartet’ by a friend who introduced me to the emo music industry. It’s a basic shape ranking the top emo bands/artists. I used this information to discover Twenty-One pilots recently being placed with the three bands on the Emo Trinity due to them becoming extremely popular since their Blurry face album. They are both well known for their deep well thought out lyrics, describing real mental health issues and every day faced problems. They are also known for keeping their albums in themes, which is what I attempted to transfer this concept onto vans shoes as a way of advertising: