Design It Yourself: Custom Keds

So when I posted the "DIY for the New Year" bit a few weeks ago, one link I neglected to include was the Custom Keds page at the Keds website. Not that a pair of "custom" Keds is fully custom (as in "made to measure"), but they do offer the ability to upload your own photos and/or designs to create a shoe unlike anything else you'll find on the market.

And that got me thinking: How does this process work? Do the shoes look good, or do the color photos get washed-out in the transition from digital media to canvas fabric? So I ordered a pair to find out (I had to order them for my college-age niece, as women's and children's sizes are the only sizes offered in the custom range at present -- goshdarnit!).

Below are a couple of my own photographs that I uploaded for use as designs, taken during a visit to Las Vegas while the CityCenter project was still under construction:

Yeah, I know, not particularly girly, but my niece is that peculiar brand of roll-out-of-bed, throw on some sweats and stumble to class sloppy, so photos of pretty flowers just weren't going to cut it.

Note: I saved the flower photos for the shoes I ordered in kid's sizes for Louise's children -- they haven't been shipped yet, but I'll show photos of those when they arrive.

The shoes took a few weeks between the ordering and receiving, since they're manufactured in China and were shipped directly from the Chinese factory to my doorstep, but I was genuinely impressed with the color quality when I finally got them in my hands:

For a quickie photo transfer onto plain canvas fabric, the brights are still bright, and the images decently crisp and clean:

Because this is a low-cost, Made In China product, you're not going to be unduly impressed by the materials and workmanship (I certainly wasn't), but that's not the reason to order them; instead, the Custom Keds option offers a relatively affordable method for consumers to inject their own creative sensibility into the mass-market process.

Not to mention that it's really kind of fun selecting images, then attempting to find trim colors, lace colors and insoles to match. I may have pulled a cop-out by choosing black, but the images have so much going on already that I was afraid selecting bright trim colors might have sent the end result into eye-screaming overdrive.

I wanted to design a pair of shoes my niece would love, not run from.

The Keds website uses the Zazzle platform for the uploading and designing, so while you may be setting the shoes up on the Keds website, you have to go through Zazzle to actually order them.

The shoes themselves are just the typical canvas Keds that you can find on any other shoe website, uncustomized, for about thirty-five to forty dollars (adult sizes -- children's sizes cost less), but there's an additional twenty dollars (or so) tacked on to the Custom Keds price for the privilege of creating your own personal works of shoe art.

And if you set up a Zazzle account, they'll let you waste an inordinate amount of time coming up with extra custom-designed Keds that you can allow the general public to view and order, if they wish.

See what I mean? I was obsessed for days, hunched over my laptop, furiously uploading and editing photos. It's a siren call, I tell you! Just try and resist . . .