Jules Holbrook is a Designer and Footwear Color & Material expert based out of Portland, Oregon. He is also uncomfortable writing in the 3rd person, so that’s enough of that.

More about me: I began my career freelancing in Graphic Design while trying to make my way as a musician. As such, much of my early design work was creating album covers, posters, logos and the like for fellow starving artists.

Eventually, I landed my first real Design Job at MIXX Inc, a small but successful Business in Portland that created textile cell phone cases, laptop holders, and tote bags. Joining the team during their first season of in-house production design, I was thrown straight into the fire, learning from the ground up how to produce my designs in a variety of different textile production techniques.

After a brief (but award winning) stop as a Technical Designer for Kaiser Permanente, my love of Basketball brought me to adidas, where I started as a technical designer for Basketball footwear. I transitioned into a color designer role, and then became the manager of the color design team. With my background in textiles, my team became tasked with not only building and executing the seasonal color palette, but building and executing a seasonal material palette for footwear as well. As the guinea pigs for a future structural change within the brand, we were fortunate to experience a lot of success in those endeavors, and I have built many great relationships with material suppliers across the globe as a result, and benefitted from learning from industry-leading footwear developers every step of the way.

I believe strongly that creativity can only thrive when the process that supports that creativity is thoughtfully pursued as an element of the design itself. As such, when it comes to operationalizing the Color and Material Design process for a Product Creation team, I consider myself at the forefront of the footwear industry.