I’m Mike Sturge. I’m an industrial designer, and avid sneakerhead in Portland, Oregon. I’m pretty positive my family thinks I sit around doodle shoes all day for a living…and they aren’t necessarily wrong..but I sketch other stuff, too!! Huge supporter of cereal, the pinnacle of versatility in food. It knows no time limits.
How did I get here? In the fifth grade, I was lucky enough to be coached in football by a man named Steve Thompson who’s passion was video making. He graciously allowed me to access his subscription to the creative cloud. Over the next several years I spent my free time looking up new tutorials in image manipulation, color correction, and any other content I could get my hands on. I quickly became enamored with making new colorways for footwear within Photoshop, taking my favorite models and dreaming up stories to accommodate the colorways I was creating. When sports were taken away from me over night via life threatening injury in high school, I had to adapt, scrambling to stay connected to my true passions of competition, and sport— I started my own company in 2013; LeftCoastLaced. To help athletes of all types: professional, or recreational express themselves, and tell their stories without saying it out loud was my mission. Fortunately, this allowed me to stay connected to the world of sports, and competition at the highest level. The interaction with people from all walks of life inspired me to make a change on much bigger scale. As a result of this design riddled journey, I relentlessly pursued Industrial Design, following my passions and receiving a Bachelor’s of Science from the Art Institute of Portland in June of 2018.
CV available upon request.