Is Kanye West a Good DESIGNER? Yeezy Design Analysis

this video is sponsored by squarespace is kanye west a good designer when i first saw these shoes designed by him i thought they were a joke they go against every design instinct i have and they go against everything i've been taught about design and that's exactly why i love them love him or hate him i'm confident that almost all of you had a strong reaction to this shoe just like i did that's kanye's design work in a nutshell polarizing the reason why we have those feelings about something as ordinary as a shoe is a lot more complicated which is what we'll talk about in this video by analyzing one of the most influential creative powerhouses of our time you'll learn more about your own instincts around creativity and design big shout out to these people in my discord for giving me feedback on this video one thing i can say with certainty is that kanye's design work and his music are some of the most honest and raw creative expressions i've ever seen or heard kanye is obviously a very controversial figure i don't agree with a lot of the things he says but when it comes to creativity he knows what he's talking about you don't have to like kanye's music or his design but you do have to accept that he has made a major cultural impact i think it's easy to dismiss these designs as ugly or weird but to me that's just too simplistic i mean yeezy's design ethos is not about making mass-market shoes to be sold in walmart that are appealing to everyone they only need to sell about 40 000 shoes during every drop rather than hundreds of millions of pairs like other big footwear brands kanye and his team also have full creative control which was a condition of his partnership with adidas with that in mind they don't really operate under the same rules of most other companies designing products these days most product designs need to go through endless revision cycles and approval processes from people who are very very scared to take any kind of creative risk with kanye in control the design team is able to take massive risks that most designers would only dream of in a lot of cases they're questioning what a shoe can even be the thing that really sets these designs apart is that most designers are obsessed with precise clean harmonious lines and kanye completely ignores all of that now organic blobby design isn't anything new but i haven't found many designs quite like yeezy i mean sure you've got art nouveau from the early 1900s but art nouveau takes inspiration from nature in a more literal way they use actual leaf and vine patterns rather than sort of abstracting them then you've got the objects from the late 90s and early 2000s but usually the proportions on these have a logic to them they're sort of a hierarchy you know what to look at first second and third with a lot of yeezys the shapes don't seem to relate to each other in any obvious way which is what makes them feel almost like living creatures the only design that i can think of that has a somewhat similar aesthetic is the 1992 gea focus and this mustang mach3 concept car but really none of these designs are quite like easy now generally speaking a lack of direction and harmony and design is considered a bad thing the designer should carefully lead the viewer's eye through the object so the user can see key touch points or make sense of what it is that they're looking at just as a very obvious example if you're designing a camera the record button should be placed in a spot that's easy to access and it should probably be red because red stands out and that's an important button on the camera most of the time there's a good reason for following these guidelines of design it helps the people who use our products understand them better it helps people feel comfortable with them but kanye and his team have blatantly gone against that notion time and time again your brain just can't make sense of all these chaotic patterns and chunky proportions if you hate yeezys that's probably the reason why the designs are super raw almost primordial even in fact the closest thing i could find that relates to yeezy's work is not even man-made a lot of yeezys look to be inspired by prehistoric creatures from the cambrian era which was one of the largest explosions of new life forms in history i have no idea if this is what the easy design team was looking at but it's interesting that the creative explosion of weird yeezy forms looks very similar to the explosion of life forms from the cambrian era it's like the designs look both ancient but also futuristic kind of alien almost one thing i can say for sure is that kanye's design team isn't looking at pinterest and thank god for that by the way you should subscribe got nothing to lose another key to the success of yeezy shoes is the fact that kanye is an outsider to the design world i don't think kanye even wants to belong you can see that in his design work but he's even said it himself he said in an interview i don't have some type of romantic relationship with the public i'm like the anti-celebrity and my music comes from a place of being anti he's also said i may not always say the perfect thing but i'm gonna say how i feel i like some of the gaga songs what the does she know about cameras i think these two quotes could easily apply to his design work there are a lot of things that kanye has said that i disagree with but i do respect the way that he unapologetically explores creativity in ways that most traditionally trained designers would never ever even dream of kanye's taken this outsider approach to an extreme when he first launched his yeezy fashion line it was mercilessly ridiculed by fashion critics and as time went on his collection slowly got a little bit better and better each year and by the time his season 6 line rolled around the fashion industry was genuinely excited to see what he was going to make next but he wasn't responding to multiple invites to display his work at fashion runway shows people were wondering if he was even gonna launch a new line that year finally he did showcase his fashion line but it wasn't on a runway it was on instagram kanye shared his fashion line through kim kardashian's social media at the time kim kardashian had over 12 of instagram's total audience following her it garnered millions of views and it was an absolutely masterful campaign more importantly it sent a message this was kanye's way of saying i don't need you and i'm not one of you in one interview kanye goes off about how we're all confined to these boxes both literally and figuratively a lot of his designs sort of transcend categories like these yeezy 350s are they a running shoe a lifestyle shoe a trainer i mean kind of all of the above and none of the above most other footwear designers know about well-established subcategories and conventions within shoe design just changing the silhouette slightly is a really big deal for them but kanye just doesn't seem to care about these conventions he just does what he thinks is cool kanye's disregard for the rules quote unquote is a powerful thing this might annoy design purists but he brings a fresh take to the industry which i think is a major reason for his success speaking of beautiful design you should check out squarespace i've used squarespace as my own portfolio site for over a decade it's packed with features that make it easy for anyone to make a website if you're making a portfolio site and you want to make something fast they have some absolutely beautiful layouts that will make your work shine their website builder is one of the best in the business and you can customize templates with simple drag and drop controls if you want to go deeper you can customize your site fully with css there's a reason why i've been using squarespace for so long it's easy to use and fully customizable head over to squarespace.com design theory to save 10 off your first purchase of a website or domain using code design theory back to the video kanye is known for being arrogant but when it comes to hiring people he puts his ego aside and only hires the best one of kanye's best hires was steven smith steven has been head designer easy since 2016 and it's his job to help realize kanye's creative vision steven smith has a pretty impressive resume and he's known for coming out with some pretty crazy and bold designs of his own it's impossible to talk about kanye's design work without talking about his music a big part of music is about collaboration what's especially interesting is the way that steven and kanye work with each other they're constantly sending sketches back and forth to each other they just feed off each other and keep building on top of each other's ideas steven describes a constant overflowing of concepts all coming out at once when he said this it made me think of when i play music with my friends and it makes sense because of kanye's music background when you're jamming with somebody you feed off that energy one person throws out a musical idea and then another person builds on it i felt this on design teams sometimes but it's far more common in music i think this is one way that kanye's musical career has informed his design process and ultimately the designs that he creates the collaboration and that lively energy comes across in the shoes and the way that they're designed steven smith describes a certain explosiveness and movement in the creative process and i think that shows through in the actual final designs as well i've looked at every single easy shoe and with maybe one or two exceptions there's this organic free-flowing nature to all of them it's all about freeing yourself from constraints freeing yourself from these boxes and preconceived notions of what design should look like or what it should be and it's just this free raw expression of ideas like i said before though a lot of these products go against my instincts as a designer i find them borderline repulsive sometimes but they also fascinate me it's like a car crash that you can't look away from for example the phone runners now the more open side of me is intrigued maybe it was the designer's intent to make it feel kind of off-putting and maybe these organic natural shapes are not harmonious on purpose maybe it wouldn't have made sense for the use case my point is that it's easy to be dismissive but it's better to take the time to really understand where someone is coming from first of all it helps know a little bit about the designer apparently the guy who helped with the design for these is a surfer i've been surfing my whole life so i can definitely see the inspiration from sea creatures or maybe the little gurgling eddies and backwashes and whirlpools that you'll see while out in the ocean there's a certain asymmetrical fluidity to the design that's related to that let's talk about the functional aspects too i mean the shoe is very breathable it's all one material and all made from one piece which requires minimal assembly and it's incredibly cheap to make a lot of shoes can become expensive if there are many parts and there's a lot of assembly required the foam runner is also easy for the user to take off and put back on supposedly they're extremely comfortable the algae-based foam material is also potentially more eco-friendly than other shoes and the fact that it's all made from one material would make it easier to disassemble or recycle now you might be thinking hey john there's a thing called sandals that have existed for thousands of years and they do pretty much the same thing and you're not wrong about that but the way this hugs the foot in such a comfortable way is an interesting evolution of that idea they're kind of like crocs but they use even fewer components and it seems like they fit the foot a lot better let's go deeper into the aesthetics and we'll start with the silhouette it's super rounded in the front now most modern shoes are way too pointy in the toe area this has roots as early as the 12th century where the aristocracy wore uncomfortable shoes as a way to show everybody that they didn't need healthy feet in order to do manual labor wearing shoes that are intentionally uncomfortable and fashionable goes back to at least the 10th century in han china and it's still in effect today in various forms throughout different cultures even modern athletic shoes have pointed toes and this makes no sense from an ergonomics perspective if you look at your foot you'll notice that its widest point is just behind the toes now yeezys are definitely not the only shoe to have more rounded toes by any stretch i'm not saying that but they are one brand that does it very very consistently this subtle change in silhouette already makes a huge difference in setting them apart from other sneaker designs this is not only breaking away from a 1 000 year old fashion trend but the new yeezys are generally pretty comfortable in fact the new yeezy 350s are among the most comfortable shoes you can buy if we look at the holes of the foam runner you'll notice that they don't really harmonize with each other which is why they look so weird what's interesting is that if you start from the heel of the shoe these lines feel kind of related to each other but then as you move forward there's less and less harmony among the shapes these details look like they were taken from several different designs almost and then patched onto one shoe normally when you design something you want to have a first read a second read and then a third read basically what do you look at first second and third but with these foam runners it's not super obvious what those first second and third reads are a lot of these lines and holes are kind of clashing with each other because they're different shapes and sizes and they're in different patterns and configurations and it's like your eyes can't really find a resting point and this is visually unsettling but when you're judging a design's aesthetics it's important to consider the context so maybe there's a reason why the phone runners look like this first of all these shoes look a lot more busy if you examine them from eye level but they actually look a lot more cohesive when you're looking down at them and that makes sense because that's how people will be looking at them while you're wearing them and it's also important to consider the context of how they will be worn i mean if they're styled with the right outfit they actually kind of work i mean because the shoes catch so much attention pairing it with more understated outfits and neutral tones seems to look okay the bottom line is that this shoe is a statement piece so while the crazy excessive detail is a little unsettling it does grab your attention and this shoe is pretty much impossible to ignore if you look at it through the lens of grabbing attention this shoe is very successful this is a larger trend that i see happening throughout design where companies are resorting to crazy designs to grab attention i even made a video about it once again these crazy proportions are a theme that you see in a lot of the easy line it's what makes them feel more like a weird creature than a static object whether it's the stem player looking like a sea urchin fossil the 450 is looking like a shoe that's being eaten by a slime blob or the 700 v3s which look like a skeleton that's caging a shoe in they all kind of have that underlying radical lifelike theme now you you've probably been thinking throughout this video that i wouldn't be taking these designs nearly as seriously if anyone other than kanye designed them and and you're probably right the success of yeezy has a lot to do with kanye and his fame but at least he's using that fame to spark new conversations around design rather than just taking ordinary products and slapping his name on them like you see with so many other celebrity brands it's important to mention that kanye is also stolen designs from other people and claim them as his own on social media obviously i don't agree with this but i still think that his involvement with the design community is a net positive even if it's just to bring ideas around design to a wider audience so what is the key to kanye's success as a designer kanye might not have the technical skills or the training but i think what he does have is a lot more important kanye has heart and passion for his craft and he has the willpower to see his creative vision through i can't think of many designers who would have the courage to even sketch something like this never mind actually produce it and show it to the world especially in the high profile way that kanye has to do it i'm not sure where kanye's creative limits are but it's very clear that he hasn't reached his ceiling yet and there are no signs of him slowing down whether you love or hate yeezy's design everyone should take notes on the creative risks that kanye and his team are willing to take and see if there's a place for that kind of creative risk in your own life thanks for watching everybody if you enjoyed this video please subscribe you might also consider supporting me on patreon this video is my first time publicly announcing patreon and there are some cool perks you get for supporting me and the more i can invest back into this channel through patreon the easier it will be for me to make better content for you have a great day

Channel: Design Theory

Views: 1,386,630

Keywords: kanye west, yeezy, design, product design, industrial design, John Mauriello

Id: FTnz_nG9iUM

Length: 15min 24sec (924 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 18 2022