Shoe designs have been straying away from simple for quite a while now, so I was pleasantly surprised when I found the Nike Free 5.0 V4 on Zappos. Ignore the name of the shoe for a moment (5.0 V4 ??).

Here’s the outside profile shot:

Not much fuss, nice and straightforward. I had a Nike Free shoe before and I really liked it. Ready to buy. Then I switch to the inside profile shot:

Dammit. Same colors and materials, but the design language feels different. 25 dot cutouts, saddle-shoe like styling, capped toe, wedged-in Nike logo. I recognize some of this design is functional, but it still hit me as a two-face shoe design. One side’s great, the other not so much.

Thought I had one.