Haley Larson’s winning shoe design speaks loudly on the topic of bullying.

Larson, a soft-spoken senior at Kentwood High, created a custom kick using an orange Converse Chuck Taylor All Star as her canvas as part of an anti-bullying campaign.

A student in Leslie Armstrong’s art class, Larson’s shoe was chosen by The Swanx Footwear company and can be purchased for $119 with $5 from each shoe sold going to Kentwood’s art program.

For Larson, who has enjoyed drawing since was she was a kid, it was a nice way to return to the art room after putting the class on hiatus for two years due to a full schedule.

“I really want to expand my technique,” she said.

The idea first came about when Swanx shoe company asked Armstrong to help come up with a logo design for an anti-bullying campaign. Armstrong suggested they turn it into a contest and have students submit their own designs for a Chuck Taylor All Star. The one thing they had in common was the use of the color orange, which Armstrong said is the color for bullying prevention.

For the competition, Armstrong said she divided her classes into 30 teams. Each team created their own slogan to go on the shoe, as well as a logo to harmonize it. To help provide some inspiration for the designs, Armstrong had class discussions about bully, the different kinds of bullying, and how art could send a message.

“We had a lot of conversations about bullying how it made us feel so they could have a sense of ownership,” she said. “We didn’t focus on the negativity of it.”

As the contest was held around Sept. 11, one of the discussions involved the differences and similarities between bullies and terrorists. The conclusion, Armstrong said, is bullies kill their victims one day at a time.

Another way to help the students brainstorm were various examples of product logos and slogans, such as Nike’s “Just Do It,” and how the logos help people identify the product easily.

Rather than work on a team, however, Larson chose to work alone on her shoe, something which she said she wasn’t certain she wanted to do.

“I wasn’t sure if I was going to try it or not,” she said. “I just strayed brain storming. I sat there and thought and thought about it. I liked to doodle so it’s something I thought would be easy to design on a shoe like converse when they already do it.”

At the same time, Larson said, she wanted a slogan that wouldn’t sound too similar to another company’s.

“I didn’t want it to sound like a commercial,” she said.

Larson finally decided to create a shoe logo featuring a chain broken or separated by a heart, with the slogan  “stop the pain, break the chain.” This, she felt, would address the issue of bullying prevention while also appealing to anyone, rather than one party involved.

“I had different versions of it, but the one that stuck it was easy to come up with a logo and it could be interpreted in many different ways,” she said. “(There are) not specific examples. I think any kind of bully would fit and that’s why it worked.”

The slogan, she said, deal not only with bullies who were bullied themselves, but victims who might become bullies. She also made another design for the low top version.

Curtis Johnson owns Swanx, ultimately chose Haley’s shoe design.