Converse recruits a bunch of ace creatives for Chuck II shoe launch

Date
27 July 2015

Chances are if you’ve ever been a teenager, had a passing interest in indie and/or punk and have had even the most fleeting dealings with the creative industries you’ve owned a pair of Converse Chuck Taylor All Stars. Well, exciting news is a-foot (see what we did there?), as the brand is about to launch the Chucks’ sassy new little brother, the Chuck II. We’re still not sure what they’ll be like yet, but in the run-up to their grand un-boxing the brand has commissioned a series of artists to create artworks based around the idea underpinning the new shoe, “obsession.”

It’s a broad and powerful notion, but one that hasn’t deterred a series of creatives including Last Suspect, Campbell Swift, Nihilisten, Graphonaute, Sophie Roach, Nick Taylor, Mr Div and Franic Lam from coming up with the goods for a brief that seems diverse but also restrictive: all the work uses a colour palette of neon yellow, grey and black. Sophie’s work caught our eye with its doodle-like charm – swirls and dots and wheels and little Illuminati-like scribbles surround the big yellow “II” that heralds the announcement of the new shoes. It’s like a comic book merged with the scribblings of a talented hand in a boring meeting, and it’s all very mesmerising.

Div has taken a rather different approach, making the “II” monoliths swell before our very eyes, spin in a 90s video game motion or form an infinite tunnel. We must also give a nod to Nick Taylor, whose eerie stills of deserted streets form an ominous proposition that borrows from Berlin subways in its typography and from horror films in its ambience. His motion work though is an entirely different beast, with a dartboard-like graphic acting as a device to subtly backdrop a ghost shoe; or a kaleidoscopic little number that teases the peepers. Turns out there’s a lot you can do with a few numbers, a limited palette and a lot of “obsession.”

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