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James Carnes: Well, industrial design helps teach you different skills and to work with different components, processes and more technological product design, which gave me a good foundation to work from when I started designing trainers. As time went on, I became more interested in developing more into streetwear, but keeping that core of really understanding how a product is built has definitely influenced my design philosophy.

I used to make furniture, so that's always going to be influential in terms of structurally planning stuff. One of the guys I worked with in London is a designer named Alex Taylor and he does brilliant work. Automotive design is always something I else I look at, but it normally does come back to fashion design as the main inspiration when I'm designing footwear.
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It's really more about working out the priority in each case and then finding a balance between the two fields that works. You have to make sure with the functional stuff that it really delivers, which can then be tough to work around aesthetically. Fashion is more about making individual statements, so you get more leeway with how high performance you have to be. Stella was great to work on because it was right in the middle of the two.Which one do you prefer?
I have to say, it's amazing to be at adidas because they do both. We're the only sportswear brand with a true fashion label – Y-3 – and then we also do things like supply product to the World Cup, every single sport in the Olympics and so on.Weirdly, loads of fashion kids seem to be wearing really high performance jogging trainers now, so I suppose that kind of puts you right in the middle anyway.
True. And I get that, because high performance running sneakers have a very distinct, clean look. They're arguably a lot more stylised than your basic streetwear sneaker, so it makes sense to me that the kids interested in fashion are taking to wearing them.

It definitely takes time. This whole project for this Boost technology started over three years ago, and it's all a process of trial and error and experimentation. You get those light bulb moments from people along the way, but nothing's ever taken lightly – those moments are all put together over time. The myth of creative genius is sometimes overrated. That's not to say that people don't have moments of genius, but it's getting the right group of people together to share those ideas that gets things done.
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Oh, it's a huge part of my design philosophy. Products have to be intuitive and appeal to people as something that's going to be emotionally expressive. It's not all about, "Show me all the technology at once in whatever four colours you like." It's the same with cars: sure, you might talk up the engine or whatever, but it's the shell that's always really going to grab you.Which era of trainer design is your personal favourite?
For me, I’m really partial to the 60s and 70s stuff because there were breakthroughs in things like the first rubber outsole with herringbone, and the superstar was one of the first shoes to use tumble leather, so I like that inventive innovation. But I was going to uni in the 90s, so all that chunky, technology-driven stuff – when computers and lights and high-functionality aspects were first being added to sneakers – is definitely my favourite era personally.Cool. Thanks, James!Follow Jamie on Twitter: @jamie_clifton Want some more stuff about sporty shoes? Try these:Dude, You Slept Rough to Buy Kanye West's Trainers? Why?My Favourite Sneaker CampaignsOld Trainers Make Me Want to Have SexForgotten Sneaker Brands
