About Me
Footwear Design graduate
An ambitious, driven and highly motivated individual with high aspirations to succeed within the footwear industry as a creative and innovative footwear designer. I have a constant desire to improve and maintain the highest of standards within all endeavours, aiming to achieve perfection is important to me.
My name is Ryan Roddy and I come from Derry, Ireland. I moved to Leicester 3 years ago to study Footwear Design BA (Hons) at De Montfort University to pursue a future career in the footwear industry. Completing my final year during a pandemic wasn't easy but I learned to adapt to the changes and used lockdown to my advantage. During my final year I focused on spending the extra time that would have been spent on prototype sampling to my advantage by entering external competitions. I won the Prospect 100 Global Sneaker Design competition and as an award I received a mentorship with Jeff Staple.
INSPIRATION
Peil’s inspiration and philosophy
A lot of the philosophy behind my designs aims to find harmony between functionality and fashion. Peil's focus and DNA rests within football. A game that is nicknamed "the beautiful game" for its ability to bring even the most divided communities together. Peil also takes inspiration from motion lines within footballs mo-cap analysis and couples it with formal construction techniques and shapes.
Football brands have spent years on creating and testing in technical ways to produce a product that is simply better for striking ball. Peil focuses on intercepting these technologies at the point of placement and utilises them to fit on different parts of the shoe that you wouldn't expect to see them. Providing a seamless diffusion between functional and unique design.
MY WORK
PORTFOLIOS
Evolution by Trending Selection (ETS) sketches
ETS mood board
ETS development sketches
ETS Transmuter X
ETS Elipse Descender
Hi-Tec Inspiration & development
Hi-Tec final design
Quagga rationale
Quagga development sketches
Quagga final design
Bespoke award
New Balance development sketches
New Balance development sketches
New Balance MX-45
Peil - mood board
Peil - development sketches boot
Peil - performance football boot
Peil - development sketches shoe
Peil - final design
DETAIL
Evolution by Trending Selection
Trying to shape a picture of what the future will look like is essential to staying ahead of the footwear game and trend forecasting plays a big part in this. Brands claim to predict what will be ‘hot’ and say they are ‘ahead of the curve’ when designing a new shoe. However, the end product that comes from trend research is always similar to their competitor’s outcome and it isn’t original at all. This process repeats year in year out until eventually trends come back around in a cycle. Wouldn’t it be better to forecast 4 years ahead of time? or is it time for someone in the industry to really get ahead of the curve, break the trend cycle and design for a year that is quantum leaps away? When designing for the future, an accurate prediction of what the foot will look like during the next stage of evolution is needed. Humans began to evolve 7 million years ago, and our ancestors’ foot once resembled the chimpanzee’s. What will the future foot resemble and is it too early to design footwear for it?
Your lack of dedication is an insult to those who believe in you
Graduate Fashion Week in partnership with:
