British footwear brand Dr Martens has held strong links with rebellious youth culture since the 60s. For their most recent project, they turned to Central Saint Martins to enlist the creative work of recent graduates for their Autumn/Winter 2014 launch. It started during the summer. The creative team from Dr Martens came to the annual CSM degree show, where they explored the variety of courses and backgrounds, and eventually chose six designers based on the work they had on display. Each designer was assigned a room, and tasked with the challenge of designing a show space for a selection of Dr Martens shoes. The event, lasting two days, was to show the new AW14 collection to international shoe retailers.
The designers were all supervised by Jonathan Baker, a lecturer of Visual Merchandising at LCF, keeping in mind that the deadline for their designs was mid-September. The designers praised Jonathan for “pointing the right way ahead.” Jonathan’s input was crucial as Dr Martens would only continue to develop the designers’ ideas if what they came up with was to their liking. This is the second year that Dr Martens have had the product launch at CSM, and have actively got involved with the graduates to help them with the design. We spoke to the designers who took part in this exciting project, and here’s what they had to say.