Building a modern soccer cleat, built to function and appeal visually to elite footballers
Focus
Footwear, Brand Direction
Role
Lead Designer
Timeline
Summer 2026
Tools
Sketching, Illustrator, Photoshop, Blender, Substance Painter
What is the purpose of this design?
As a soccer player, there is constantly an issue with your cleats. Whether the material isn't quite what you like, the width is off, they stretch in the wrong areas - all conditions cleats are bound to fail by somebody's expectations, at some point.
In this project, I tasked myself with building based off of individual criticisms of soccer cleats. I wanted to satisfy a full team of athletes with one design, working to appeal physically, functionally and aesthetically to a group of elite soccer players - the Georgia Tech mens soccer team.
When speaking to the members of the mens soccer team, I had 3 areas of physical function that were overwhelmingly spoken about. These were flexion in the heel, issues with the lacing system, and frustration with getting the boot on. below shows how these issues took a large majority of the conversations conducted.
In addition to the form I wanted to find in my sketches, I wanted to incorporate three design features that large footwear manufacturers have already used to address these issues.
Village (PM) is a modern skate brand, and they've made a double heel loop their signature. I personally own a pair, and it makes putting on and taking off the shoe much easier.
Nike's 2015 Super Fly uses a post embossing method, where elastic is looped around the base of the lace box, under the exterior color coat to ensure stability and light stretch.
New Balance's Freeze line, built for lacrosse, uses a wrap around heel stabilizer that has perforations throughout that allows the heel to move while still being supported.
Following this form building, I wanted to understand how my cleat would look in 3D. I also wanted to use ai to render these so I could quickly create a base tech pack, and, with this, I could overlay and build out the 3d model of my cleat.
When building out this finalized cleat, I needed it to stand out and draw attention without being too loud. Athletes love the subtle changes, the features that are loud without that "cringe" effect. When looking into modern patterns, polka dots drew me in hard. They've finally started to cross from luxury into streetwear and, now, into sport.
Additionally, I wanted to establish this shoe as cutting edge. Dark product shoots, metallic and complex soleplate. It needs to draw a customer in without saying too much.
