Who invented the swoosh logo

The original designer never saw a dime. Nike Never Forgets its Friends! Davidson worked for Nike for years before leaving to pursue freelance work. Nike also awarded her with a swoosh-shaped gold and diamond ring and shares in the company. Let's Collaborate. We'd love to hear about your digital project. Please get in touch with one of our Project Consultants. Knight floated his ideas to several investors but eventually had to work by himself.

When he offered his ideas to his old coach, Bowerman suggested that they both team up and establish a partnership. As Blue Ribbon Sports began to grow, it had many mail-order sales and its own storefront. Then it started to dawn on the founders that their future might lie in manufacturing, in addition to distribution and direct sales.

Therefore, they took their first steps towards establishing the shoe manufacturing company, Nike. At the same time, they also launched the famous Nike swoosh symbol. The first one was that during that time, Knight and Bowerman kept experimenting with shoe technology. At no point did they stop deliberating on how shoes could be improved. Thus, Bowerman and Knight were able to create a number of new designs, which athletes used at local trials in Oregon.

Nike knew that their new footwear and technology needed the endorsement and promotion of athletes. In the beginning, the company managed to secure the promotion and endorsement of Steve Prefontaine, who performed marvelously well in their shoes.

Wearing the Nike pair of shoes, Prefontaine performed exceptionally well at the Munich Olympics. He also went on to be featured in Sports Illustrated magazine. In the s, Nike tasted some highs and lows. Aerobics became a massive phenomenon, and that sort of movement required specific shoes. Nike could have grabbed the opportunity to manufacture and sell aerobics shoes, but they missed that opportunity by a mile.

Fortunately, Nike got the chance to redeem itself pretty quickly. In the s through to the s, Nike started to branch out to soccer, golf, clothing, and other fields in sports. Today, you can see the Nike logo everywhere, from fitness technology to casual wear to workout apparel and, of course, athletic shoes. Apart from using celebrities to attract customers, Nike has acquired many small companies to stay ahead of the competition and further their success.

But for now, Hurley International and Converse are some of the major subsidiaries of the sportswear giant. At the time, Davidson was a graphic design student at Portland State University and Knight was the little-known co-founder of Blue Ribbon Sports, making sales at track meets from his Plymouth Valiant. Knight supplemented his income by teaching accounting courses at the university and, as fate would have it, overheard Davidson inform a classmate that she couldn't afford the high costs associated with a college oil painting course.

Knight needed someone to create charts and graphs he could show Japanese footwear executives and offered Davidson the job. Her success in that gig led to recurring work designing posters, ads and flyers for the company.

In , Knight and his co-founder, Bill Bowerman, needed a logo for a new line of running shoes they were introducing. The pair asked Davidson to create a striped logo that stood apart from established rivals Adidas and Puma.

She received just one request: It had to look like speed. Davison mocked up five designs — including the swoosh. Knight didn't particularly like any of the designs but the swoosh design stood out to him most. Later that year, the swoosh was used for the first time commercially and in , Blue Ribbon Sports was renamed Nike.