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Kedding Me
September 2008
Graphic Design / Activism
User Generated Content permeates every facet of our
lives. From the print-on-demand books, shirts, stamps, and now shoes,
one can easily build, buy, or sell a handful of things.
Kedding Me is a project that
manipulates popular applications for communication rather than
commidification.
Right now Keds new on-line store is
the first p.o.d. company to allow users to upload their own
images and
photos to customized shoes. In the past hacktivist like
Jonah Peretti took advantage of Nike to
place blunt statements on their shoes such as "sweatshop". Kedding Me
investigates the same premise but takes a more journalistic approach to
allow Keds to dissapprove of their own behavior instead of being
directly told that they adopt inhumane treatment of their workers.
Experiment Research Objective
The purpose of the Keds experiment is to test an alignment of past and
present in a politicized way.
Experiment
Use Keds website to design shoes depicting the worker conditions at the
factory. First I searched the internet for information and images of
the Keds factory. I then downloaded these images and uploaded them straight back on
to the Keds Design site where I constructed a pair of Keds shoes. These
shoes went on the Keds market place for view and sale.
The company did not like my product and removed it. I reuploaded it to
the site and it was removed numerous times from the market place. I then
began an emailed dialogue with the Content Management team at Keds
hoping to open up the story and document the process. However after the initial
refusal letter they never answered my questions and the story went flat. And despite
all that work, I never got my fresh ass kicks!
Precedent Research
Jonah Peretti "sweat shop". MIT Student, Jonah
Peretti attempted to get Nike to embroider the word sweatshop on the
back of his customized Nikes only to be refused. The whole thing erupted
through a viral email campaign based on Nike and Peretti's
correspondance that made the int'l media rounds. Shimon Attie "The
writing on the wall: Projections in Berlin's Jewish Quarter". Attie
projects images of Jews from the Holocaust era back onto places where
the original photograph was made so that there is a compression of time
and space.
Implementation
Use tools that are made for the common person. Basic understanding of
google image searches. Saving and uploading images found on the web.
Navigation of user-generated interfaces. Personal design aesthetics.
Click
here
to read about Kunshan Sun Hwa Footwear Co. Ltd. in Kunshan City, Jiangsu Province, China.
