For my undergraduate illustration thesis, I did a project on the origin stories of iconic sneakers throughout the 20th and 21st centuries (basically, as long as sneakers have been around). The project originally consisted of 12 pieces but through the course of the year, I found that certain pairs were less "presentable" than others.

Certain problems I ran into included: narrowing it down to 12 sneakers, certain stories or concepts not translating well to a single illustration, and my advisor being, in addition to incredibly difficult to deal with at times, probably the least qualified person on earth to advise a thesis on popular sneaker culture (she told me she owns one pair of Airwalks). When it was all said and done, however, I settled on these select few.