Active - Productive - Selfabsorbed!

Yeah yeah, you know. Designer, handyman, skater, funny guy, opinionated, helpful, caremore, careless etc etc

[teitandersen-blog]

16 years ago today, we got the samples for some of my first designs for @c1rca . I got a footwear design internship on a long shot and it turned into my dream job. The two white shoes never made it to the line. During this time I also designed the shoe in the second photo, which launched in Fall2006 I think and was in the line for many years. I am still very proud that my boss and my friends loved to wear and skate this shoe. Some of them still talk about it. Still can’t believe that the dream of becoming a skate shoe designer came true 🙏🎉 #c1rca #samples #8track #pullovers #skateshoes #keepdreaming #whitegum #pullover #sample #development #footweardesign #design #skateshoe #skateshoedesign https://www.instagram.com/p/CH92WdEBUXL/?igshid=16rlwz0y7cd64

[teitandersen-blog]

Guldfolie på mat film med CMYK grafik. Flotte stickers designet af @linedahlstrom #guldfolie #guld #gold #hotfoil #cmykart #mattefinish #stickers #klistermærker #branding #marketing #typography #typografi #blingbling https://www.instagram.com/p/CG1rOQPB8wd/?igshid=88qtu7rm7zb

[teitandersen-blog]

First step in the right direction

Although I have been passionate about shoes, especially sneakers, from around 1995 I must admit that the workers’ conditions trouble me. Most sneakers are made in China and many are made in Vietnam and Thailand. Often, the people that have these manual labor jobs are not paid well, simply because they have limited skills due to lack of education. This raises a question in my mind - if the people that have these types of manual labor jobs get better education which leads to better jobs and higher standard of living, who will then make the shoes etc? Well, I think, first of all, the way the world modern economy works today is not sustainable. In other words, we are able to buy cheap sneakers simply because cheap labor is still available. But with the development of the 3rd world countries, the price of labor will rice = the price of cheap sneakers will rice eventually(labor costs in China for shoe production has risen dramatically over the past 10 years). Perhaps this is because the western world is still exploiting countries less developed than us, even in 2016. Adidas is building a robot factory in Germany and factories in China are likewise experimenting with using robots for the jobs that are currently held by low paid humans. The clip below is showing the world’s first fairtrade shoe factory. But if the people in the 3rd world countries can no longer make a living doing unattractive manual labor jobs such as making shoes, what will they then do to feed their families? I hope that in time, profiting off someone else’s labor will change and the playing field will be levelled off. But will it? Most lower and middle class people even in the western world still have a industrial age mindset about money (due to lack of education on the subject) however, we are now in the information age and the safe job climate is changing. I have a feeling that we are well on our way to moving into the “robotics age” at which point, the labor for those who own the robots, will be much cheaper than in the past and thus, they will separate them selves from the rest of society even more than today. Where does this take us? Not sure. But I fell that the manual labor jobs will be fewer and further between and I can not really see the elite (the ones that will own the robots) wanting to share with the people that will be deprived of their only way to make a living, which is manual labor... 

[teitandersen-blog]

The ELEMENT “Kahan” is a one-piece upper with eye stay and heel counter reinforcements. I first came up with the “one-piece” upper design for the C1RCA shoe “Spade” in 2007. The Spade was a vulc skate/lifestyle shoe which came out really good. At that point, I had never seen a shoe that had a one piece upper. In the later years it has become more common with shoes like Nike Koston 1 and Adidas ZX Flux. But in 2007, there where no shoes like that in the market.

[teitandersen-blog]

In 1997 I started a project to get a skatepark in my city Gentofte, just outside of Copenhagen which was a sort of DIY park from 1998 until 2015. Today, it looks like this. 3.000 square meters of granit skate plaza, 1.000 of them are indoors - and free to use. We reused our OG granite ledges + the old re-reused mini ramp which was originally built in Ballerup in 1990. Thank you to Gentofte Kommune and Mayor Hans Toft for supporting my vision.

[teitandersen-blog]

Some of my footwear design, past and current:

Top photo is the current “me too” skate shoe from Element “Darwin” -The past 5-7 years pretty much any brand on the planet has made a shoe like this. The first shoe of this kind to be really successful was the C1RCA “Drifter” which I designed in January 2007. The Drifter is the 2nd most successful C1RCA shoe ever, only out-sold by the Adrian Lopez AL50 which was designed by my friend and mentor Dustin Deardorff in 2002.

Bottom photo is showing the very first sample of the “Drifter” shoe -obviously a few adjustments were needed. The idea was to make a shoe that would “wear and feel” similar to a slip-on, but that had laces and was skate-able. I think I hit the nail on the head -whatchu think?

[teitandersen-blog]

Jägers skateboards released a video this past fall. I shared a part with Hubert Brzuchalski, Julius “Jolle” Olander and Manu Heinrich.

[teitandersen-blog]

Various Jägers decks on display at a café in Copenhagen.

I run a skateboard company called “Jägers Riders Guild” -initially based around the core crew at the Jägers skatepark near Copenhagen, Denmark. 

From left to right:

#1 Pollo: Obviously a spoof based on RL Polo. Jägers logo is a Rooster with a skateboard. You get it. 

2# Pin Stripes: Various inspirations. Main theme: High recognisability at long distance. 

#3 Bob: Based on retro game “Bob” which is a poorman’s pool table with discs instead of balls. 

#4 Masonic: Inspired by geometric patterns and the simplicity of two-tone art.

[teitandersen-blog]

My first shoe.

This is one of my first ever designs and the very first shoe of mine to make it past the sample stage. It came about in October 2004 in the upstairs living room in the house where I stayed on Camino Vista Flora, Talega, San Clemente one late night during my  internship at C1RCA in San Clemente, CA, USA. Basically, this is what I call a pure design. This was not designed to fill a spot in the product line, to satisfy a design brief from a creative director(there wasn't one at the time) nor was it designed to fulfill what  the market wanted. This design was the shoes I wanted myself at the time. I started the process by drawing up a low top version first, and then built it into this mid top. A few month later they hired a creative director and he came up with the name 8Track sometime in 2005. The shoe hit the shelves in Fall 2006 and is in the C1RCA Mainline product category to this day. This photo is the original, and my favorite colorway -one comment to this photo: This is an early photo sample - I later lowered the front bumper 3mm to make room for moving the top pinstripe on the foxing down 3mm to show the white above the top pinstripe.

C1RCA 8Track. Black Blue White. First released in Fall 2006.