A week after we started talking about our Capstone projects in class, I got my interview. Before that, I was worried. Who do I know relates to designing sneakers? No way my mom has any connections. She does boring lawyer work all day.
Life lesson to kids, never doubt your mom. She will never, I repeat never disappoint you.
Of course, my mom’s client, who does sponsorships knows one of the head, senior shoe designers of New Balance. Oh yeah, I’m totally not going to try and interview that guy. Just kidding, I would absolutely, 100% get on my hands and knees to interview, after I found out, Andrew Nyssen.
Andrew was free every weekday after 7:30. I’m starting to like the turn of events that’s happening to me. In my previous reflections, everything would go terribly wrong, but now everything was falling into place perfectly. Hard work pays off.
Anyway, I told Ms. Edwards and she sounded super-excited. I was too. I started to research Andrew Nyssen and found a sufficient amount of articles about him. I clicked on one from the website Counterkicks.* Click the link, lots of info. Oh, and look at the star later at the bottom of my blog post.
I researched him some more and he designed 4 shoes:
- 880v4
- 870v2
- 990v3
- Minimus Zero Road
On May 26, I met with Ms. Edwards to talk about my interview and, I’m going to talk about it in my next blog post, my site visit. We went over my interview questions. The final IQ’s are down below.
| Why did you major in Industrial Design and Graphic Design? | What are the pros/cons of your job? |
| What challenges do you face when designing sneakers? | What kind of research and/or professional development do you do for your career? (For example: Conferences? Sneaker stores? College campuses?) |
| What is a regular day for you at work? | What tools do you use for designing a sneaker? |
| How has the technology at New Balance evolved since you first started working there? | What steps go into designing a sneaker? (Any research? Collaboration? Approval?) |
| How do you define “success” when it comes to sneaker design? (Sells the most? Aesthetically pleasing/cool?) | Using your definition of “successful”, what is your most “successful” sneaker design? Please describe. |
| How have your sneaker designs changed over the years? Why? (For example: Inspirations? Technology? Materials? Trends?) |
After we went over that, we did some more research on him. Ms. Edwards went on his LinkedIn profile, because I did not have a LinkedIn account. He went to Kendall College and majored in Graphic and Industrial Design.
I left to Boston a few hours later for my interview and site visit. In the Site Visit blog post, I’ll talk about why I changed from interviewing Andrew after 7:30 on FaceTime to interviewing him at his actual desk.
The next day after we arrived at Boston, my family got in the car to go to the suburbs of Boston, Lawrence, where the factory is located and where Andrew’s work space is.
After we parked and entered the building, we waited for Andrew to show up. We saw him a short while later. He signed us in and got out his pass to go in the elevator that lead to the offices, the factory where the actual shoes are made etc. On his floor, there were confidential boards that had New Balance’s plan for 2017 on it. There were also inspiration boards. He let my sister and I doodle on Sketchbook Pro, an application that designers use to make new sketches. Then we talked. I told him about what our Capstone project was and other things related to Capstone then we got to the questions.
My questions were after I revised them as we were going along:
- Why did you major in Graphic and Industrial Design?
- What are the pros and cons of your job?
- What challenges do you face when designing sneakers?
- What interesting things go into sneakers?
- What is a regular day for you at work?
- What tools do you use when designing a sneaker?
- How has the tech at New Balance evolved since you first started working there?
- What steps go into designing sneakers? Research, collaboration, approval, etc.
- How do you define “success” when it comes to sneaker design?
- What is your favorite sneaker?
My answers are in a document that you probably won’t understand so I will insert a link here to the rough draft answers and I will insert a link to the rough draft answers to the new, clean version. It will be complete by 6/2.
After the interview, he gave me his card if I ever needed some input from a professional sneaker designer. I said thank you, then he gave my mom a 40% discount on the total of what we buy at the New Balance Factory Store. I got 2 new shoes and I’m wearing one right now.
*Now to explain why I put the star next to the Counterkicks link. If you didn’t go to it go to it now!!!
Click on this link if you already looked at it. It’s my explanation.