Monday, August 8, 2011

1971: Nike Swoosh


via imprint
“June 1971 is the date the Nike Swoosh was launched. Designed by Carolyn Davidson for $35. The origin of the mark goes like this: Phil Knight, the co-founder of Blue Ribbon Sports (BRS) that evolved into Nike, wanted to differentiate BRS’s custom product from the ones they were importing from Onituska in Japan: ‘…so Knight turned to a graphic design student he met at Portland State University two years earlier.’ One day in 1969, the student, Carolyn Davidson, was approached by Knight and offered $2 per hour ‘to make charts and graphics’ for his business. For the next two years Davidson managed the design work on BRS. ‘Then one day Phil asked me if I wanted to work on a shoe stripe,’ Davidson recalled. The only advice she received was to ‘Make the stripe supportive of the shoe.’ Davidson came up with half a dozen options. None of the options ‘captivated anyone" so it came down to "which was the least awful...’ ”
Read the rest here.

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