Over time, we as a society have done some pretty cool things with shoes. We’ve put wheels on them, we’ve put springs on them, we’ve put them on the moon.
But, as of yet, we haven’t really brought them into the world of printing in the sense that the shoes themselves are printers, have we?
Until now.
(Cue “2001: A Space Odyssey” theme)
Taylor Tabb, a designer who has worked on projects like Twitter confetti at the Super Bowl and edible robots on Netflix, just created a fictional HP tie-in sneaker with a CMYK printer built in.
Oh you said footprints? Sorry I thought you said make a foot that prints… pic.twitter.com/CKhqdppe3S
— Taylor Tabb (@taytabb) August 21, 2023
Functionality aside, these are extremely stylish. The Converse-esque high top is in fashion right now, the minimal HP branding adds just a touch of color without overloading with a logo, and the tubes of CMYK ink is an aesthetically pleasing color combo.
Now, whether these actually work sort of remains a mystery. It sure looks like it based on the video Tabb posted on Twitter, but as we know, you can fake just about anything on the internet. However, Design Boom reported that the shoes were “fitted with genuine HP ink cartridges and some inkjet hardware,” with a hidden, built-in printer under the sole.
That sort of doesn’t matter, though. We’d love for this to be fully functional, and truly hope that it is, but at the end of the day it can still provide inspiration as an out-there brand promotion with HP (albeit one that Tabb did without HP’s involvement), and show how you can take something basic like a white sneaker or any other traditional piece of apparel, and add an element of the brand’s identity into it.
Sneakers have plenty of room for creativity. They can be the promotion themselves, like Lil Nas X did with his now-infamous Nikes, or the way Nike created the illusion of a one-of-a-kind sneaker being cut into pieces. They can also be integrated into a larger promotion that uses print products like boxes or other promotional products, like a “Space Jam” promotion that used a video game system in addition to sneakers.
“This project is the product of pure joy and curiously — what would happen if two very different objects were one?” Tabb said, according to Design Boom. “If two very different brands collaborated?’
Sometimes distributors and designers should channel their inner Wonka and think about how far a promotion should go. The end result might not go as far as the imagination, but a memorable promotion that’s pulled off well will stick with the end-user forever, even if the product itself doesn’t.
