Designing for Your Brand: When Footwear Innovation Loses the Identity

After more than 12 years as a Design Director, one thing I can say without a doubt is this: the goal is for someone to see your product and know what brand it is before they ever see the logo.

That is what strong brand identity looks like. A strong footwear brand has its own design language—a specific look, attitude and point of view. Following footwear trends is important, but innovation should expand that language and push its boundaries, not abandon it.

One of the biggest problems in footwear design right now is how interchangeable brands have become. Walk through a shoe floor and you'll often see the same silhouettes, the same trend details and even the same colors repeated from brand to brand—with a different logo stamped on each one.

When Footwear Innovation Doesn't Match the Brand

The Havaianas rubber heel is a perfect example of what can happen when that balance gets lost. When images of the chunky, toe-covered rubber heel started circulating, the immediate reaction from many consumers was essentially: “Crocs made a heel?”

And that's the problem.

The Havaianas customer isn't coming to the brand because they're concerned about shielding their toes. This is an iconic flip-flop brand known for effortless, barely-there rubber footwear. A protective, Crocs-like toe treatment communicates a very different product attitude and customer.

Whether you love the shoe or hate it isn't really the point. If consumers see a new footwear design and immediately associate it with another brand, the product may be innovative—but it isn't strengthening your brand identity.

Designing Footwear for Your Brand

Innovation isn't about proving that your brand can make something different—unless innovation itself is your brand identity, which for some brands, it absolutely is. Push the boundaries, but know which boundaries define your brand. If you innovate so far outside of your identity that consumers think they're looking at someone else's product, you haven't evolved your brand—you've lost it.

And to be fair, Havaianas has some super cute new styles this season that show exactly how expanding a brand can work. The Women's Yellow X Havaianas Avaia Wood-Beaded Rubber Sandals feel fresh and new while still making sense for Havaianas. They take the brand's recognizable rubber-sandal DNA and give it a more elevated, fashion-forward attitude.

That's the sweet spot in footwear design: give us something new, but make sure we can still see you in it.