Back in February we offered you the chance to design an exclusive Boxfresh Swich hi-top in association with the Teenage Cancer Trust. The prize was £1000 as well as getting your shoe produced in schuh stores nationwide! Plus for every entry Boxfresh donated £1 to the Teenage Cancer Trust.
After a lot of deliberation, Sarah Coey was crowned the winner and as part of her prize she was given a work placement with Boxfresh. Here’s Sarah’s story:
My name is Sarah and this year I won the Boxfresh Swich It Up competition!
A Fine Art graduate of Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, my artwork is a Mad Hatter’s Tea Party filled with lunacy, a riot of colour, black and white intricacies and peculiar phrases.
My artistic practice is focussed around daydreams and nonsensical thoughts that are hidden away in the corners of people’s minds. These are depicted as explosions in a whirl of vivid colour and illustrated details, which captures the elusive atmosphere and fluidity of the subject matter. It is something which is a temporal snapshot of the potential inner lunacy of the working mind…I am inspired by silly phrases, childrens books and the natural, organic world around me.
I am in love with Posca Pens, pheasants, cheese and a good wooly jumper! (It is Scotland after all!)
You can find out more about what I’m up to on my facebook art page www.facebook.com/sarahcoeyartwork
My Placement at Boxfresh
At the start of July I spent a week with the fabulous team at Boxfresh for work experience.
A little nervous to begin with I was immediately greeted with bright colours and friendly faces in the building, and instantly felt reassured! The team were all very friendly and chatty and explained that they had a busy week planned for me, so that we could both get the most from the experience. My time was divided up between different departments within Boxfresh; footwear design and processes for production; market research and design tasks; a refresher course on Illustrator for a POS and lots of other bits and pieces in between!
I was very excited to learn how my trainer design had been developed into the product which would be sold! Joel and Chris (from the footwear design team) took me through the alterations and changes they had played about with to make the trainer more consumer friendly, prototypes with fabric and the structure of the footwear design. Having studied Fine Art, the design process was quite alien to me and I really enjoyed seeing how the design process works. I had also not realised that the footwear team is present throughout the entire process; from initial design to final product and thought this was brilliant as they could try and ensure the finished article was as near to the original design as possible.
I was given a two day task of coming up with a mood board for S/S ’13 and then presenting back to the footwear department which I absolutely loved! Researching current trends, men’s fashion and footwear and style blog’s was great fun, and I loved creating a collage of ideas!
I was also very happy to get a refresher course on Illustrator and the short-cuts that can be used! This has definitely been beneficial and I am experimenting more with this package now I am home with my new found skills!
On my last day the team took me out for lunch at Wagamama’s; brilliant as I don’t have one of these anywhere near me at home! It was a lovely way to say cheerio. I really had a fantastic experience with Boxfresh and learned loads. Can’t wait to see my trainers out in the shops now!
We love Sarah’s design and can’t wait for it to hit stores later this month. Look out for it!
