August 29, 2023 • 37 mins
Everyone knows the Nike swoosh — but where did it come from? In today’s episode, the guys dive into the origin story of one of the world’s most recognizable brands, from its humble beginnings to its status as a modern-day icon.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
for tuning in. Let's hear it for the Man, the myths,
the legend, mister Max Williams woos Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Love it. Sorry that was that was I was. I
was going for a new kind of wu. I like
it had a bottle. I'm a prop comic now.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
Yeah, and we've gotta we've always got to expand our horizons,
try new things.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
The objects here nothing really, we're recording live.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
No, there's cool stuff. Our shoes are cool. I'm Benyard.
Know what kind of shoes are you walking today?
Speaker 3 (00:58):
I'm a Van's guy, man, a couple you know, I'm
actually in my old age become a Crocs guy.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
I know, too much consternation.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
Of my fifteen year old child who actually for my
birthday bought me what they consider an acceptable pair of crocs.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Right right, that's very recent. And next, what kind of
shoes are you wearing there?
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Man?
Speaker 4 (01:20):
So I have some partially recycled adidases on because I
try to only wear shoes that are at least like
forty percent recycled.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Now I'm sorry, did you say Adidas is adidases?
Speaker 3 (01:30):
I think Adidas may well be its own plural like
sheep like sheep, or or or or.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Well, we're gonna we're gonna get to that, because there
is a reason we're talking about shoes.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
I only wear crocs on special occasis though, by the way,
I love Vans.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
I have a pair of Jordans. I finally got my
first pair of Jordans.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
I like I've you know, I'm a dad, So I
have some new new balances that I wear to the gym.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
What have those? Ben? Those are cool looking?
Speaker 1 (01:56):
What are those? Uh be taking a figure it out?
I don't worry. I cleaned up by. These are fresh socks.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
It's Toronto on the bottom. That's pretty good.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
That's weird. I notice these are called Hoff.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
No idea sounds cool.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
No Idea. Okay, so off brand shoes we are today.
We're talking about a really interesting story, a history of
logos and a history of sneakers. Because I don't know
if you and I aren't got like big basketball guys,
so we probably don't think of well, we're not big
(02:31):
sports guys. We don't have mad boosties. We don't have
mad boosties. But that's a great show. Shout out Jack
and Miles.
Speaker 4 (02:36):
Do we need someone to talk about sports now? Well,
I'm just saying no, no, we're good.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
No, I'm right here.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Okay, Nolan, I don't think about sneakers a bunch. So
it's weird when you realize that there's some of the
most recognizable brands in the entire world, like the Nike swoosh.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
The swoosh yeah, or like the Pepsi swirl, you know,
the McDonald's golden arches, the rolling Stones, lips and tongue
which was actually kind of a rock and roll middle
finger to all of that kind of corporatization and logo,
you know, slinging.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Yeah, exactly. And we're gonna explore the story behind some
of these logos. I think we start with the big
dog first, Nike. I was astonished to find. I think
we all were surprised to find that Nike wasn't always Nike,
and they didn't come up with the swoosh immediately or
(03:34):
on their own.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
That's right, Ben, And and you know Nike.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
Now, I associate more with the shoe company and the
brand than I do with the Greek goddess of what see.
I don't even remember what she was, the Greek goddess,
goddess Victory. Yeah, but obviously that's what Nike is named
after and has taken over the associations with that word
entirely along with that that iconic.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
But it's curvy, you know. It sort of makes you
feel like speed.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
It has a feeling of like quickness or like like
you know, disappearing, like with a flash, like that's the
vapor trail you leave behind yourself.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Or yeah, it's supposed to be like a wing. It
feels dynamic. So back in the day, when these two
guys start the company that will become Nike, their track
and field bros. It's Bill Bowerman and Phil Knight in
nineteen sixty four, they combine their powers because Bill used
to be a track and field coach at the University
(04:35):
of Oregon and this guy, Phil Knight was his student.
Back in the day. They got together and they started
a company called Blue Ribbon Sports, which would have been
amazing for perhaps Blue Ribbon this a few decades later.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Bill Bowerman, you think people call him Bilbo for fun.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Probably, Yeah, it depends on how funny was.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
I would have been cool with that, Yeah, and you know,
Nike is still based in Oregon today. I actually didn't
realize that until pretty recently. But in nineteen sixty four
they started this Blue Ribbons Sports, which is.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
It's just not sexy. What does that say?
Speaker 3 (05:08):
It sounds like a kind of a Mom and Pops
sporting goods store where you might get like baseball teas
printed for your little league.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Yeah, and I associate blue Ribbon with awards with culinary awards, exact.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Blue ribbon ji, I jam.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
Yeah, so maybe maybe not the best association now, but
we get what they're talking about first place, is what
they're just saying, sure.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Or you know, the prized pig at the fair.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
And initially this Blue Ribbon Sports, they did have a logo,
but it was something that I actually wasn't super familiar with,
but it kind of makes sense.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
Something called a lettermark.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
So they basically just had these initials brs that were
sort of, you know, laced together on top of the company's.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
Word which is word mark. You might ask, different than
a letter mark?
Speaker 3 (06:04):
We exactly, A word mark is basically a typographic treatment.
It is a font typically would need to be proprietary font,
like a custom design fund. If you use some you know,
we talked about this, I think on the Fonts episode,
like how well, actually, you know what's funny is I
believe the logo that mister Elon Musk has chosen for
(06:27):
his new social media app X is actually like some
sort of hexadecimal code from a set of characters that
is completely untrademarkable, and he just hasn't gotten that far
and is thinking yet he just like shoved it out there.
So yeah, you need you can't make up a logo
for your company in comic sands and then register that
(06:48):
as a word mark, right.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
Yeah, yeah, exactly, And gosh, I had so much fun
on the font episode, particularly when we got to the
story the wingding guy.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
It was a font of conversation.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
It was it was and Max is just let us know,
we put a drum beat in there. And these logos
are important. They communicate with the world in multiple ways.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
You know.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
It kind of hacks your brain. So even the most
simplistic appearing logos have a lot of thought put behind them.
Probably one of the most famous word marks is FedEx.
And if you have somehow not heard this, folks, the
reason that FedEx logo is so impressive is because if
you look at it, you'll realize that they built in
(07:38):
an arrow.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
That's right, Yeah, it's a hidden arrow. It's an era
that's created by the negative space, I believe.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
And that's the thing. I mean you mentioned all the
work and research and all that stuff. A lot of money.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
Goes into these seemingly simple and innocuous creations too. Logo
design is a massive expenditure for a company because they
put research and development in to it. They do focus
testing and all kinds of things. Sometimes his crowdsource, which
you know, if you remember the episode of Silicon Valley
where Gavin Belsen was trying to crowdsource what his signature
(08:12):
would look like on the new the box and the
most popular one looked like a giant penis and he.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Did not clock it like at all.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
And the dirony was that he was going to have
his own signature crowdsource, see because his actual signature apparently
everyone said it made him look like a sociopath.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Yeah, that's that's the tricky thing about crowdsourceing anything. Shout
out to body mcboat face. So these guys didn't crowdsource,
but they did they did understand that their branding was important.
So blue ribbon sports brs. People are wearing their bers
(08:51):
I guess you could call them, and they're buying them
from out of the back of this guy's car in
the very beginning, and they say, look, our branding is fine,
but it seems pretty complicated. We don't want people to
have to think and process a lot. We want them
to see something, identify it with us, and buy the shoes.
(09:13):
So in nineteen seventy one they get together and they
decide to change the name of their brand. They land
on Nike, after the Greek goddess of victory, and over
time they got to the Nike swoosh. But the question
is how did they get there? Who came up with
the id?
Speaker 3 (09:40):
Well, it wasn't crowdsourced, but it was kind of a
homework assignment for somebody.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
Yes, like I believe it was a.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
Young graphic design student who was studying under somebody that
knew the Nike guys. And then it was sort of like, hey,
these guys are looking for a thing. Here's an opportunity
for you to get some real world design experience and
you know, some billable hours, which I think in the
(10:11):
seventies the going rate was something like seven dollars an hour,
and that was like pretty decent.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
That was still kind of a sweet deal. Yeah, because
you're right, man. She was a student at Portland State
University and she started as a journalism major if I
recall correctly, and then took a design course just on
a lart Carolyn Davidson. Oh yes, yes, ye, this brilliant
designer does also have a name. She gets her bachelor's
(10:39):
degree eventually nineteen seventy one. So the story way we
heard it is that Phil Knight, remember that former student
who had started started a company. He was teaching an
accounting class at the university and he overheard Carolyn Davidson
(11:00):
and say, like complaining that oil painting supplies were expensive,
and so he said, look, you can come work with me.
I'll why don't you create some charts and do some
graphs and stuff like this because I've got Japanese executives
coming in I need to impress them.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
Japanese people love charts and graphs. It is known.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
I think most people like a good graph. I'm a
sucker for an infograph.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
Yeah yeah, yeah for sure. But it's like I like
ones that like convey very little information to jump in here.
Speaker 4 (11:28):
Actually, guys, we're here in the studio, and right before
we got recording, ran to two of our coworkers another Ben,
Benjuster and Alex and I was like, hey, how is
y'all's meetings?
Speaker 2 (11:38):
Like? Good, there's a power port. I'm like, ooh, I
like power point. I'm that guy.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
Okay, we should like have a podcast where we just
critique power points.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
I believe. Yeah, let's do it. Let's do it.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
I love that. How easily that will work on an
audio medium exactly? Or you know, we have cameras in
one of these studios. Now we could just now my
pitch is it's purely audio. Okay, I will I will
accept that pitch if we can also kind of make
this our our home based studio, like Max was saying,
and get just a cartoonish like an offensively large picture
(12:11):
of a very complicated graph.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
We're gonna have room with the grandfather clock.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
Oh yeah, okay, see it, right, yeah, you see it,
you do see it.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
I have a question.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
It seems like this is one of these apocryphal kind
of tales where it's almost the stuff of legend, where
like as we you know, a minute ago, we were
saying that it was almost like a competition where they
looked at several options, you know, and that there was
some like design students that were sort of tapped for this.
But then there's this version of the story where it's
like the benevolent Nights, you know, in between his accounting classes,
(12:43):
well being the CEO of a burgeoning footwear empire is
like kindly offers to pay two dollars an hour so
you can buy paint.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
Oh yeah, yeah, earlier we had said is we wanted
to get back to this, so we said seven dollars
an hour. That's a really sweet gig. Yeah, I was,
I was, I was overshooting significantly. Well, you know, maybe
Phil did pay her that much. Maybe that'd be cool.
So here's what happens. The way we understand it is
the swoosh design is reluctantly chosen out of several options,
(13:17):
and Carolyn, like anybody who's been a freelance graphic designer,
you know how this works. You have to come in
with several comps, comparisons, People look at them, they tell
you what they do or don't like. And according to
Nike's own website, when Phil Knight first saw the Swoosh,
he said, I don't love it, but it grow on me.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
See.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
I find that to be pretty forward thinking, honestly, because
I mean, sure, maybe you know, they weren't what we
know of the Nike Empire today. They were still on
their way to that thing, right, They're still a little
bit smaller, scrappy operation, so they probably needed to move quickly.
They wanted to like get this thing chosen so they
could move on. They probably I didn't even quite see
the significance of it at the time. Yeah, to be
(14:04):
able to say, you know, maybe this isn't perfect, but
let's roll with it, because I think it could grow
on me. And then it it's become the most one
of the most iconic, you know, brand marks of all time,
just so recognizable. And then you have to ask yourself,
is that because it's really good or it's because we've
been seeing it for so long?
Speaker 1 (14:23):
That's the question, sort of a chicken and the egg
kind of thing, right. So it's nuts because they just
happened to choose this curve check mark and it had
Nike in hand drawn script across it. You can see
a picture of this as well. The reason it's the
(14:44):
swoosh is supposed to be reminiscent of several things, of
accomplishment and of wings, because the goddess Nike was known
for being a personification of victory and she had a wingspan.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
Oh she had wings. Yeah, she had wings.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
Oh you know what, you might recognize some famous sculptures
of her where her head is conspicuously missing and it's
just like the wings and no arms. There's definitely some
some statues of Nike that didn't make it.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
Might even have some in your local art museum. But
that's right.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
I always, I guess when I think of the wings
and shoes, I think of the guy with the winged shoes.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
Who is that?
Speaker 1 (15:25):
Hermes?
Speaker 2 (15:26):
Hermes? Hermes not cool is enough name for a shoe company.
Speaker 4 (15:30):
I mean, you know he's got a past, isn't Hermie's
in charge of like the river sticks and like hell.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
Basically, No, that's that's somebody else hades. Hey, okay, Hermi's hades.
You can get. You can get the confusion.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
Hermes is a character in the future Ama. But yeah,
Hermes didn't we do it? An Illumination Global Unlimited ad
years ago about her Hermes mop Yes, written by her
powre vogel Bo. That's right, Yeah, that was a weird one.
Check that episode out. But anyway, they go with Nike,
she's got wings too. Again, I would go with Hermes
because I think he's got wings literally on his shoes already.
(16:06):
That's pretty that's a really good point. It seemed like
a missed opportunity. But Nike, it is. They got the swoosh.
I can see it now. The swoosh represents her of
the curve of the wing. I'd never really associated it
with a wing. I think I always, in my mind
envisioned it as like the sort of blur that's left
behind as you're sprinting, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
And I think that's valid. I also thought of it
brought up. I always thought of it as like check
that's done. Yeah, you've accomplished that thing. We found out.
The name of the the name of this check mark,
the swoosh. It's a bit of automatopoeia. It's supposed to
be just like you mentioned, it's supposed to be reminiscent
of the whoosh sound that the shoes make when they're
running by.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
You got it. Okay.
Speaker 3 (16:48):
So that's the thing about logos is they conjure a
lot of associations and connections in the mind of the viewer.
You know, you can obviously help feed those associations with
the products the company makes and're you know, advertising campaigns
and all of that stuff. But over a long enough time,
brand names and brand images really can start to have
(17:09):
a very powerful impact, you know. And we're going to
see that in another example of another kind of athletics
clothing slash fashion company, you know, because a lot of
these brands that started off as like you know, for
runners and athletes have really become like streetwear and like
like super high fashion and all these crazy collaborations with
like designers and influencers and you know, pop cultural.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
Folks and the fashion house Chanel makes sneakers. I did
not know.
Speaker 3 (17:38):
Yeah, have you ever seen any of those horrible Balenciaga
sneakers that are like ten thousand bucks a pop and
look like they're just covered in hot glue.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
I kind of want those.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
Wreck you get those.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
I'll get the yellow crocs versions and we have to
rock them together on the same day and walk with
our arms linked up.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
All right, But Max has to be into Max. You
gotta get weird.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
He can throw rose petals behind us. What word shoes.
Speaker 4 (18:04):
I when I I mean, I have a friend who's
really into elevator shoes, So I might get some elevator
shoes and be like, you know, walking my hygd all being.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
Like six four Are those like platform shoes? Yea, like
Herman monster shoes. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (18:15):
I have a friend it's about five four inch. She
wears eight inch elevator shoes.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
My kid wears some kind of Herman monstery type cloud hoppers.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
Yeah, I've got I've got some old boots that I
wear around. You gotta be careful because when we come
into the office, Man, I can't walk in wearing combat boots.
It seems strangely on purpose and indicative of things that
I am not attempting to put out into the office.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
Anarchy. Man, I almost wore my crocs to the office today.
But I absolutely should and have no problem doing it.
But I just thought, no, Yeah, it's too soon.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
You gotta stop letting your kid push you around.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
Oh, they got me this. It's got a little Mario karts.
What do you call those things? Little fidget guys on
it go in the holes. Yeah, there's a word for
you told me and I can't remember.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
Okay, Well, we'll get.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
To it, but here's what we want you to know
about this design about Davidson. At this point, we might
think this is yet another story of a creative person
kind of getting the short shrift from these immoral corporate
folks taking credit for the work she did and so on.
But luckily that's not exactly the case here. Davidson, who
(19:26):
was alive today, maintains that she doesn't know how long
she worked on the swoosh.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
But she doesn't know how much she build them, right, yes,
how much did she build them? I think it was
like for seventeen and a half hours at the rate
of two dollars an hour, which is thirty five bucks
that she got in the check for this job, which
I did inflation calculator.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
It so we can do a boop and a dude.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
In today dollars, it's two hundred and sixty seven dollars
and thirty six days, which still is like low for
a design job. Usually a designer today, for that kind
of work would probably be getting fifty to one hundred
dollars an hour on a like freelance like low end kind.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
Of like help make you know, blue ribbon trophies. The
mom and pop.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
Sure.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
Yeah, so, this, unfortunately is a pretty common story. It
often happens in the world. But Davidson's tail ends a
little bit differently. She didn't profit immediately from her work
designing this thing, which she did do on her own.
But eventually the company came back and gave her a
proper thank thank you. They threw a huge party in
(20:35):
her honor, and I think they gave her stock.
Speaker 3 (20:37):
They did worth upwards of a million bucks, which is cool.
What does eventually mean though, By the way, are we
talking like the twenty fifth anniversary of the swoosh or
like a couple of years later.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Yeah, that's a good question, man, did she for instance, like,
did she write a letter? Did someone? Did someone get
mad at them? It was nineteen eighty three, so it
like ten years.
Speaker 3 (21:03):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
But here's the thing. I don't want to deraalize too much, Ben, but.
Speaker 3 (21:07):
Yeah, like, is it immoral to pay somebody the going rate.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
For a thing then becomes larger than life. You don't
know that it's going to become larger than life. It didn't.
I wouldn't say they took advantage of her at all.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
I don't think so, because you know, again, they're scrappy
at the point they were they were working together there,
they were more casual, you know what I mean, and.
Speaker 3 (21:31):
The company just wasn't yet what it had becomes. And
you could argue it wasn't like the swoosh all of
a sudden made Nike what it is. Nike made Nike
what it is, and they hustled and they got huge.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
And another aspect of this is, you know, you see
this in so many industries, what like podcasting right when
we make a lot of shows, you know, and it
could be tough to tell which ones work out, and
it's continually mystifying. That's why for a lot of agreements
in the creative world, you'll see people bake in stuff like, hey,
(22:06):
if my little jingle turns out to be a big
deal for Dell, I would like some more money.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
I would think that a lot of companies would really
bulk at that. Though.
Speaker 3 (22:18):
It is a very common negotiation tactic to give up
as few like points on the back end of things
as possible, because then you're tied to somebody forever. It
was treated like a work for hire situation. Then it's
like we paid you your rate, you delivered us the
product date to you, good day to you, go with God.
But it's really cool. It worked out great, kind of
like that what's the Flaming Hot Cheetos guy? It was
(22:40):
it was like he was a custodian. Here's a movie
chet called Flaming Hot Cheetos. It's about the story stick
with what works that?
Speaker 2 (22:50):
Did they hook him up?
Speaker 4 (22:51):
Like?
Speaker 2 (22:51):
Well, I think there's a happy ending there too, if
I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, there totally was. And those stories are inspiring.
I think it's cool to hear it. Uh. They also
this is strange flex Phil Knight also gives Carolyn Davidson
a gold and diamond ring engraved with the Nike swoosh.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
Wait, like as a marriage proposal? What are we talking? Unclear?
Speaker 1 (23:15):
I think it was just hey, this swoosh is good.
Remember the swoosh from earlier?
Speaker 2 (23:19):
Yeah, to jump in here.
Speaker 4 (23:21):
Actually, I don't think it's I don't think at this
as weird as maybe y'all do, because gold and diamond
rings are pretty common for when you win a championship.
So like with the Atlanta Braids won the world here
years ago, everyone above a certain level got a world
through his ring.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Max with the facts that sneaking in.
Speaker 4 (23:44):
And peacefull in Loh, it's just for you right now.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
The boom Also, Uh, one of the other weird things
he gave her chocolate swooshes. Anyway, I think this can
now it's insensual. Now now it's just I think he's
b nice.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
Half a dozen oysters. Well yeah, creepy foot.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
Massage, play some shod you know how it goes is
amazing and uh, before we move on, Max, well we've gotcha.
You have a bit of a Nike connection yourself.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
Right Yeah.
Speaker 4 (24:27):
So before I worked here at iHeart Our Heart Media
making podcasts, I was an independent podcast maker myself and
my original co host, this guy named Kevin Cool. Literally
his name, his last name is k u h l.
This guy is so cool that he donated his kidney
to his coworker at Nike. Yeah, he works. He lives
actually in Hillsboro, Oregon, works on the Nike Man campus. So, uh,
(24:52):
he does not like that I wear I'll say that
or Adidas. I We're gonna go with Adidas Potus.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
So if it's the combination of Audi and does right,
then it could be ADIDASIZ because it's plurals to things.
Speaker 3 (25:09):
But it doesn't sound right, I just say, do you
wear Adidas? I wear Adidas. It's like when you're talking
about a brand, I don't think you have to pluralize.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Yeah, it's kind of like pants. It's like, you know,
I always it always gives me a slight chuckle when
I'm talking to a very aesthetically centered fashionist to person
and they're like, Ooh, I love this new fault pant.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
I love a pant. It's a singular pant. It's just
the one leg last thing.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
Yeah, being pedantic here, if it's a company that makes
multiple things, you wouldn't say Adidas. You wouldn't pluralize it.
You say, I'm wearing shoes by Adidas. I'm wearing a
hoodie by Adidas. I'm wearing my Nike tennis shoes. But
you also think it's say Nikes.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
See, I don't even know.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
I think I gotta tell you, guys, I suspect English
may not be the best language.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
Well you think so.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
I've been studying it for quite some time, and I
have at best a rudimentary grasp how lot of rellly.
Speaker 3 (26:06):
Nillinginess to the English language, No question about that. I
had one little personal anecdotis want to mention. I actually
worked with Nike for a little bit developing a podcast
about Jordan's Air Jordan's and like that whole story of
Nike and just how they figured out how to like
(26:26):
get in on that branding and like you know, associate
themselves with this like up and coming superstar. They were
like glued to Jordan from like the earliest days and
then they got him wearing his own signature red shoes,
all of that stuff. There's a really cool documentary about it.
So I learned a lot about this stuff that I
wouldn't have normally learned. So I actually propose that maybe
(26:47):
we could even cover a larger, you know, part of
the Nike story because it really is pretty interesting. And
there's also you know, the connection to skateboard culture, graffiti culture,
like hip hop and all that stuff. I think, you know,
ridiculous and that it's ridiculously interesting.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
Absolutely, I agree. I think we're unanimous in this. The
motion carries uh maybe we can get ridiculous history branded
sneakers one day dream big right, talk to.
Speaker 4 (27:14):
My buddy Kevin. Actually, one of the best things about
no one's the one who works at Nike. You can
go into the Nike store and everything is forty percent off.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (27:21):
It is all like basically at cost maybe not at
costs per se, but like it's like four percent offs.
You can go there, like Okay, I'm gonna grab all
these really nice shoes and they're like fifty bucks snip.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
Can you just tell them, you know? Kevin? Yeah, well no,
you need to have a pass on your phone. It
is intense and like, yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
And Kevin, be cool. I bet you never heard that before.
I'll take some air Force one.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
You can have him. He was also in an episode
of Ephemeral Too nice.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
Wait our air Force one's Nike are okay good?
Speaker 2 (27:53):
Those are the Jordan's. They're a style of right exactly. Duh.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
So this woosh first comes out on something called the Nike.
It's one of the first shoes the brand ever makes
with their new name.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
Is it in fact a cleat or is ity just
being clever because it's capitalized so it's like the name
of the shoe. But I think of a cleat as
like golf shoes with the pointy things on the soccer
shoes soccer shoes or like, but some of them are
point to heer and sharper than others. Some of them
are just rubberized, and I would imagine that's probably more
we're looking at, because we actually also have another type
(28:25):
of shoe called the Nike Waffle Racer Love that supposedly
was the original prototype, was made by literally using a
waffle iron to make the treads on the bottom of
the shoe.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
Yeah, and it follows what Bill and Phil wanted to
do in the very beginning. They wanted to make running
shoes that were much lighter, that wouldn't weigh you down
when you were running track and field. And the Nike
waffle Racer is still around. It's shoe.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
I have a pair of these, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (28:54):
And you know, the cool thing about Nike too, is
like they they're always doing cool throwback kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
Oh yeah, and like they've got such a history.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
It's like Nintendo, you know, they've got this pantheon of characters,
but in this case, it's like, you know, designs from
throughout the ages. And we talked about this a little
bit because of course talking about design in terms of
the logo, but like the swoosh also just integrates really
well into the shoe design, you know, and they have
like different like color ways and stuff and like the
swish will be yellow and the shoe will be blue
(29:23):
and all of that stuff. And like I think I'm
I have actually become not a sneakerhead, Like I don't
have like a closet.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
Full of them, but I'm into the culture.
Speaker 3 (29:31):
I think it's really really cool and I appreciate the
aesthetics and the design that goes into it.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
And Atlanta is a great city for this.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
I love this stuff too, man. And the US public
loved Nikes when they came out and they there was
so there's this big thing in sneakerhead culture where the
exclusive drops are huge, huge deal.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
People buy the shoes as investments or flip them. Yeah,
and they flip them for sure. And they also made
they go through two extraordinary lengths to be able to
get an exclusive shoe of some sort.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
Ah.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
I just said shoe instead of shoes to our earlier point. Anyway,
So this is an old pattern for Nike. Consumers saw
this at the US Track and Field Olympic Trials in
Oregon and they couldn't get their hands on the shoe
until nineteen seventy three, and everybody wanted one at the time.
You could get the Nike Cortes which came out around
(30:31):
the Mexico Olympics in nineteen seventy two, that also had
the swoosh on it. Eventually, like you said, they link
up with athletes. That's kind of a story for another day.
They also land on some color schemes. Warm red became
the color choice for the official logo. And you know,
now you often see a black swoosh, but it was
(30:52):
meant to It was meant to hit your brain and
stay in your brain. And a lot of graphic design
professess have studied this right in depth.
Speaker 3 (31:04):
Uh well, it's like got a golden ratio ness of
it all nice, you know. And if you think about
like some of the most I guess sticky brands you
know over the years, oftentimes they have these concentric circles
when you break them down, like the like the Apple logo,
it's all concentric circles if you really like plot it
with like a compass or whatever. And I'm sure this
(31:26):
is part of a school of design that I'm not
aware of that was like being taught.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
You know, I did not know this is a job,
but it is a dream job for someone in max
This might be a dream job for you, man, we
want to introduce you to Todd Radom Radom Radom R
A d O M. He his job is to design
sports logos sports related logos. He's a veteran, that's all
(31:52):
he does. I didn't know that could be someone's career.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
That's pretty wild.
Speaker 4 (31:56):
I'll say that's cool on all of guys. I have
found the job that I want and it involved being.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
With you too. That's really sweet. Max. We love you too.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
Yeah, we'll do shout out to all the cool teachers
playing this for your students.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
So I think I'm probably gonna have to beep that way.
Speaker 3 (32:15):
Well yeah, okay, but you can also you could keep
my disgusted astonishment if you wish.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
Now people will just have to use their imagination. As
to what you said.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
It does feel like an abochal roller coaster when you.
Speaker 2 (32:27):
Edit it that way. Awesome.
Speaker 3 (32:28):
God, I want to buy some shoes I'm looking at
I'm just like Google and images of Nikes and now
I'm just like, these are so cool looking.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
There's a Nike store in the building where we used
to work. That's why the city market. So it's a good.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
One and they often, you know, get these drops that
we're talking about. There's also you mentioned the whole like
sneaker culture and flipping and all that. There's a really
neat place in Los Angeles and on Melrose called Flight Club,
which first of all, is an awesome name, and that's
the kind of place where you go to see like classics,
you know, and just you know, the Jordan's and whatever,
(33:01):
and it's just like, you know, they're one thousand dollars sometimes,
you know, for these like vintage pairs or these specialty
limited edition things because the genius and a lot of
brands do this, like Supreme and you know whatever is scarcity.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
They do these.
Speaker 3 (33:16):
Limited edition drops or collaborations with artists and they only
make so many. There's like a pair of Jordan's that's
like Ben and Jerry's theme that I think are some
of the most sought after ones that you can find.
Speaker 1 (33:27):
Yeah, you know what, That's what we should wrap up
on because full disclosure, folks, we wanted to explore some
more sneaker logos, but I think we all three of
us got so into the Nike story that we're gonna
keep this one just with Nike. I've got some fun
anecdotes about rebop pumps. We'll save that for an episode
(33:48):
in the future, but for now, Noah's thinking a good
way for us to end is to look at a
ridiculous list of the most expensive nikes in the world.
I'm just gonna ruin it. Number one is the solid
gold o Vo Air Jordan two million dollars Loise and
(34:09):
the shoes are kind of useless, and.
Speaker 3 (34:12):
The shoe that I was just talking about, by the way, Ben,
the Ben and Jerry's are called dunks, and they're kind
of cowprints on the side. They sort of like have
the blue sky and grass kind of logo that you
see on a Ben and Jerry's thing, and then the
yellow swoosh. I'm seeing pairs upwards of eighteen hundred dollars
because apparently they were just done in such limited supply.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
Yeah. Here's the thing, though, I think that counts a
little better toward our stats than the solid gold O
Vo Air Jordan. As any hip hop fan knows. When
you heard me say O v oh, that is Drake.
In twenty sixteen, Drake spent two million dollars to get
these custom Air Jordans, and the shoes are made of
(34:58):
solid gold. She's so you can't really do anything with
them except like look at them and say, oh, look
upon my sneaks. You mighty.
Speaker 3 (35:09):
Do you remember when Nike came out with the like
back to the Future to Nike shoe that was like
the ones where he they automatically laced up like sh
you know, he puts them on. They kind of looked
like ski boots. But they did briefly have a very
limited drop of these Nike you know, Back to the
Future shoes. And once again there's a company that got
(35:30):
in on the ground floor of pop culture to the
point where they get to put out a version of
their shoe that was in a movie.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
You know, I mean like.
Speaker 3 (35:39):
Truly I think also like Ripley and Aliens was wearing Nikes. Sure,
you know, like they just they've they've been in it
from the start. And then we're masters of cross promo
and brand Yes.
Speaker 1 (35:50):
Really good to product placement, incredibly imagined to.
Speaker 3 (35:54):
And by the way, those Back to the Future shoes
now go for about fifty eight thousand dollars.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
Yes, we want to continue exploring the story of not
just the Nikes, but of course Adidas. We as we've
been discussing for a while, so we'll get back with that,
but for now, thank you, of course to missus Davidson
for designing a logo that changed the world, and thanks
(36:20):
to our research associate Jeff Bartlett. Thanks to our superproducer
mister Max Too Fast Williams.
Speaker 2 (36:28):
Huge staks to Alex Williams as well, Yes they are.
Speaker 3 (36:31):
Related, who composed our theme, Christoph Rasciotas here in spirit
he's Jeff Coats roaming the wide world of podcasts wherever
she may be.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
Yeah, a big, big thanks to Gabe Lusier, and of
course thanks to Jonathan Strickland aka the quizz I wonder
what kind of what kind of tennis shoes?
Speaker 3 (36:52):
Jesus Louis Vaton Nike Airs three hundred and fifty two
thousand dollars.
Speaker 1 (36:59):
The Nike Max was, oh no, the Waffle Racing Flat
Moon shoe four hundred and thirty seven thousand, five hundred dollars.
Speaker 2 (37:07):
Unbelievable. We'll see you next time, folks.
Speaker 3 (37:17):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
for tuning in. Let's hear it for the Man, the myths,
the legend, mister Max Williams woos Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Love it. Sorry that was that was I was. I
was going for a new kind of wu. I like
it had a bottle. I'm a prop comic now.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
Yeah, and we've gotta we've always got to expand our horizons,
try new things.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
The objects here nothing really, we're recording live.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
No, there's cool stuff. Our shoes are cool. I'm Benyard.
Know what kind of shoes are you walking today?
Speaker 3 (00:58):
I'm a Van's guy, man, a couple you know, I'm
actually in my old age become a Crocs guy.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
I know, too much consternation.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
Of my fifteen year old child who actually for my
birthday bought me what they consider an acceptable pair of crocs.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Right right, that's very recent. And next, what kind of
shoes are you wearing there?
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Man?
Speaker 4 (01:20):
So I have some partially recycled adidases on because I
try to only wear shoes that are at least like
forty percent recycled.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Now I'm sorry, did you say Adidas is adidases?
Speaker 3 (01:30):
I think Adidas may well be its own plural like
sheep like sheep, or or or or.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Well, we're gonna we're gonna get to that, because there
is a reason we're talking about shoes.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
I only wear crocs on special occasis though, by the way,
I love Vans.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
I have a pair of Jordans. I finally got my
first pair of Jordans.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
I like I've you know, I'm a dad, So I
have some new new balances that I wear to the gym.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
What have those? Ben? Those are cool looking?
Speaker 1 (01:56):
What are those? Uh be taking a figure it out?
I don't worry. I cleaned up by. These are fresh socks.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
It's Toronto on the bottom. That's pretty good.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
That's weird. I notice these are called Hoff.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
No idea sounds cool.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
No Idea. Okay, so off brand shoes we are today.
We're talking about a really interesting story, a history of
logos and a history of sneakers. Because I don't know
if you and I aren't got like big basketball guys,
so we probably don't think of well, we're not big
(02:31):
sports guys. We don't have mad boosties. We don't have
mad boosties. But that's a great show. Shout out Jack
and Miles.
Speaker 4 (02:36):
Do we need someone to talk about sports now? Well,
I'm just saying no, no, we're good.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
No, I'm right here.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Okay, Nolan, I don't think about sneakers a bunch. So
it's weird when you realize that there's some of the
most recognizable brands in the entire world, like the Nike swoosh.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
The swoosh yeah, or like the Pepsi swirl, you know,
the McDonald's golden arches, the rolling Stones, lips and tongue
which was actually kind of a rock and roll middle
finger to all of that kind of corporatization and logo,
you know, slinging.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Yeah, exactly. And we're gonna explore the story behind some
of these logos. I think we start with the big
dog first, Nike. I was astonished to find. I think
we all were surprised to find that Nike wasn't always Nike,
and they didn't come up with the swoosh immediately or
(03:34):
on their own.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
That's right, Ben, And and you know Nike.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
Now, I associate more with the shoe company and the
brand than I do with the Greek goddess of what see.
I don't even remember what she was, the Greek goddess,
goddess Victory. Yeah, but obviously that's what Nike is named
after and has taken over the associations with that word
entirely along with that that iconic.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
But it's curvy, you know. It sort of makes you
feel like speed.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
It has a feeling of like quickness or like like
you know, disappearing, like with a flash, like that's the
vapor trail you leave behind yourself.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Or yeah, it's supposed to be like a wing. It
feels dynamic. So back in the day, when these two
guys start the company that will become Nike, their track
and field bros. It's Bill Bowerman and Phil Knight in
nineteen sixty four, they combine their powers because Bill used
to be a track and field coach at the University
(04:35):
of Oregon and this guy, Phil Knight was his student.
Back in the day. They got together and they started
a company called Blue Ribbon Sports, which would have been
amazing for perhaps Blue Ribbon this a few decades later.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Bill Bowerman, you think people call him Bilbo for fun.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Probably, Yeah, it depends on how funny was.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
I would have been cool with that, Yeah, and you know,
Nike is still based in Oregon today. I actually didn't
realize that until pretty recently. But in nineteen sixty four
they started this Blue Ribbons Sports, which is.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
It's just not sexy. What does that say?
Speaker 3 (05:08):
It sounds like a kind of a Mom and Pops
sporting goods store where you might get like baseball teas
printed for your little league.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Yeah, and I associate blue Ribbon with awards with culinary awards, exact.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Blue ribbon ji, I jam.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
Yeah, so maybe maybe not the best association now, but
we get what they're talking about first place, is what
they're just saying, sure.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Or you know, the prized pig at the fair.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
And initially this Blue Ribbon Sports, they did have a logo,
but it was something that I actually wasn't super familiar with,
but it kind of makes sense.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
Something called a lettermark.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
So they basically just had these initials brs that were
sort of, you know, laced together on top of the company's.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
Word which is word mark. You might ask, different than
a letter mark?
Speaker 3 (06:04):
We exactly, A word mark is basically a typographic treatment.
It is a font typically would need to be proprietary font,
like a custom design fund. If you use some you know,
we talked about this, I think on the Fonts episode,
like how well, actually, you know what's funny is I
believe the logo that mister Elon Musk has chosen for
(06:27):
his new social media app X is actually like some
sort of hexadecimal code from a set of characters that
is completely untrademarkable, and he just hasn't gotten that far
and is thinking yet he just like shoved it out there.
So yeah, you need you can't make up a logo
for your company in comic sands and then register that
(06:48):
as a word mark, right.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
Yeah, yeah, exactly, And gosh, I had so much fun
on the font episode, particularly when we got to the
story the wingding guy.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
It was a font of conversation.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
It was it was and Max is just let us know,
we put a drum beat in there. And these logos
are important. They communicate with the world in multiple ways.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
You know.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
It kind of hacks your brain. So even the most
simplistic appearing logos have a lot of thought put behind them.
Probably one of the most famous word marks is FedEx.
And if you have somehow not heard this, folks, the
reason that FedEx logo is so impressive is because if
you look at it, you'll realize that they built in
(07:38):
an arrow.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
That's right, Yeah, it's a hidden arrow. It's an era
that's created by the negative space, I believe.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
And that's the thing. I mean you mentioned all the
work and research and all that stuff. A lot of money.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
Goes into these seemingly simple and innocuous creations too. Logo
design is a massive expenditure for a company because they
put research and development in to it. They do focus
testing and all kinds of things. Sometimes his crowdsource, which
you know, if you remember the episode of Silicon Valley
where Gavin Belsen was trying to crowdsource what his signature
(08:12):
would look like on the new the box and the
most popular one looked like a giant penis and he.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Did not clock it like at all.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
And the dirony was that he was going to have
his own signature crowdsource, see because his actual signature apparently
everyone said it made him look like a sociopath.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Yeah, that's that's the tricky thing about crowdsourceing anything. Shout
out to body mcboat face. So these guys didn't crowdsource,
but they did they did understand that their branding was important.
So blue ribbon sports brs. People are wearing their bers
(08:51):
I guess you could call them, and they're buying them
from out of the back of this guy's car in
the very beginning, and they say, look, our branding is fine,
but it seems pretty complicated. We don't want people to
have to think and process a lot. We want them
to see something, identify it with us, and buy the shoes.
(09:13):
So in nineteen seventy one they get together and they
decide to change the name of their brand. They land
on Nike, after the Greek goddess of victory, and over
time they got to the Nike swoosh. But the question
is how did they get there? Who came up with
the id?
Speaker 3 (09:40):
Well, it wasn't crowdsourced, but it was kind of a
homework assignment for somebody.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
Yes, like I believe it was a.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
Young graphic design student who was studying under somebody that
knew the Nike guys. And then it was sort of like, hey,
these guys are looking for a thing. Here's an opportunity
for you to get some real world design experience and
you know, some billable hours, which I think in the
(10:11):
seventies the going rate was something like seven dollars an hour,
and that was like pretty decent.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
That was still kind of a sweet deal. Yeah, because
you're right, man. She was a student at Portland State
University and she started as a journalism major if I
recall correctly, and then took a design course just on
a lart Carolyn Davidson. Oh yes, yes, ye, this brilliant
designer does also have a name. She gets her bachelor's
(10:39):
degree eventually nineteen seventy one. So the story way we
heard it is that Phil Knight, remember that former student
who had started started a company. He was teaching an
accounting class at the university and he overheard Carolyn Davidson
(11:00):
and say, like complaining that oil painting supplies were expensive,
and so he said, look, you can come work with me.
I'll why don't you create some charts and do some
graphs and stuff like this because I've got Japanese executives
coming in I need to impress them.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
Japanese people love charts and graphs. It is known.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
I think most people like a good graph. I'm a
sucker for an infograph.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
Yeah yeah, yeah for sure. But it's like I like
ones that like convey very little information to jump in here.
Speaker 4 (11:28):
Actually, guys, we're here in the studio, and right before
we got recording, ran to two of our coworkers another Ben,
Benjuster and Alex and I was like, hey, how is
y'all's meetings?
Speaker 2 (11:38):
Like? Good, there's a power port. I'm like, ooh, I
like power point. I'm that guy.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
Okay, we should like have a podcast where we just
critique power points.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
I believe. Yeah, let's do it. Let's do it.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
I love that. How easily that will work on an
audio medium exactly? Or you know, we have cameras in
one of these studios. Now we could just now my
pitch is it's purely audio. Okay, I will I will
accept that pitch if we can also kind of make
this our our home based studio, like Max was saying,
and get just a cartoonish like an offensively large picture
(12:11):
of a very complicated graph.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
We're gonna have room with the grandfather clock.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
Oh yeah, okay, see it, right, yeah, you see it,
you do see it.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
I have a question.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
It seems like this is one of these apocryphal kind
of tales where it's almost the stuff of legend, where
like as we you know, a minute ago, we were
saying that it was almost like a competition where they
looked at several options, you know, and that there was
some like design students that were sort of tapped for this.
But then there's this version of the story where it's
like the benevolent Nights, you know, in between his accounting classes,
(12:43):
well being the CEO of a burgeoning footwear empire is
like kindly offers to pay two dollars an hour so
you can buy paint.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
Oh yeah, yeah, earlier we had said is we wanted
to get back to this, so we said seven dollars
an hour. That's a really sweet gig. Yeah, I was,
I was, I was overshooting significantly. Well, you know, maybe
Phil did pay her that much. Maybe that'd be cool.
So here's what happens. The way we understand it is
the swoosh design is reluctantly chosen out of several options,
(13:17):
and Carolyn, like anybody who's been a freelance graphic designer,
you know how this works. You have to come in
with several comps, comparisons, People look at them, they tell
you what they do or don't like. And according to
Nike's own website, when Phil Knight first saw the Swoosh,
he said, I don't love it, but it grow on me.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
See.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
I find that to be pretty forward thinking, honestly, because
I mean, sure, maybe you know, they weren't what we
know of the Nike Empire today. They were still on
their way to that thing, right, They're still a little
bit smaller, scrappy operation, so they probably needed to move quickly.
They wanted to like get this thing chosen so they
could move on. They probably I didn't even quite see
the significance of it at the time. Yeah, to be
(14:04):
able to say, you know, maybe this isn't perfect, but
let's roll with it, because I think it could grow
on me. And then it it's become the most one
of the most iconic, you know, brand marks of all time,
just so recognizable. And then you have to ask yourself,
is that because it's really good or it's because we've
been seeing it for so long?
Speaker 1 (14:23):
That's the question, sort of a chicken and the egg
kind of thing, right. So it's nuts because they just
happened to choose this curve check mark and it had
Nike in hand drawn script across it. You can see
a picture of this as well. The reason it's the
(14:44):
swoosh is supposed to be reminiscent of several things, of
accomplishment and of wings, because the goddess Nike was known
for being a personification of victory and she had a wingspan.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
Oh she had wings. Yeah, she had wings.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
Oh you know what, you might recognize some famous sculptures
of her where her head is conspicuously missing and it's
just like the wings and no arms. There's definitely some
some statues of Nike that didn't make it.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
Might even have some in your local art museum. But
that's right.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
I always, I guess when I think of the wings
and shoes, I think of the guy with the winged shoes.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
Who is that?
Speaker 1 (15:25):
Hermes?
Speaker 2 (15:26):
Hermes? Hermes not cool is enough name for a shoe company.
Speaker 4 (15:30):
I mean, you know he's got a past, isn't Hermie's
in charge of like the river sticks and like hell.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
Basically, No, that's that's somebody else hades. Hey, okay, Hermi's hades.
You can get. You can get the confusion.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
Hermes is a character in the future Ama. But yeah,
Hermes didn't we do it? An Illumination Global Unlimited ad
years ago about her Hermes mop Yes, written by her
powre vogel Bo. That's right, Yeah, that was a weird one.
Check that episode out. But anyway, they go with Nike,
she's got wings too. Again, I would go with Hermes
because I think he's got wings literally on his shoes already.
(16:06):
That's pretty that's a really good point. It seemed like
a missed opportunity. But Nike, it is. They got the swoosh.
I can see it now. The swoosh represents her of
the curve of the wing. I'd never really associated it
with a wing. I think I always, in my mind
envisioned it as like the sort of blur that's left
behind as you're sprinting, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
And I think that's valid. I also thought of it
brought up. I always thought of it as like check
that's done. Yeah, you've accomplished that thing. We found out.
The name of the the name of this check mark,
the swoosh. It's a bit of automatopoeia. It's supposed to
be just like you mentioned, it's supposed to be reminiscent
of the whoosh sound that the shoes make when they're
running by.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
You got it. Okay.
Speaker 3 (16:48):
So that's the thing about logos is they conjure a
lot of associations and connections in the mind of the viewer.
You know, you can obviously help feed those associations with
the products the company makes and're you know, advertising campaigns
and all of that stuff. But over a long enough time,
brand names and brand images really can start to have
(17:09):
a very powerful impact, you know. And we're going to
see that in another example of another kind of athletics
clothing slash fashion company, you know, because a lot of
these brands that started off as like you know, for
runners and athletes have really become like streetwear and like
like super high fashion and all these crazy collaborations with
like designers and influencers and you know, pop cultural.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
Folks and the fashion house Chanel makes sneakers. I did
not know.
Speaker 3 (17:38):
Yeah, have you ever seen any of those horrible Balenciaga
sneakers that are like ten thousand bucks a pop and
look like they're just covered in hot glue.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
I kind of want those.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
Wreck you get those.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
I'll get the yellow crocs versions and we have to
rock them together on the same day and walk with
our arms linked up.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
All right, But Max has to be into Max. You
gotta get weird.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
He can throw rose petals behind us. What word shoes.
Speaker 4 (18:04):
I when I I mean, I have a friend who's
really into elevator shoes, So I might get some elevator
shoes and be like, you know, walking my hygd all being.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
Like six four Are those like platform shoes? Yea, like
Herman monster shoes. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (18:15):
I have a friend it's about five four inch. She
wears eight inch elevator shoes.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
My kid wears some kind of Herman monstery type cloud hoppers.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
Yeah, I've got I've got some old boots that I
wear around. You gotta be careful because when we come
into the office, Man, I can't walk in wearing combat boots.
It seems strangely on purpose and indicative of things that
I am not attempting to put out into the office.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
Anarchy. Man, I almost wore my crocs to the office today.
But I absolutely should and have no problem doing it.
But I just thought, no, Yeah, it's too soon.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
You gotta stop letting your kid push you around.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
Oh, they got me this. It's got a little Mario karts.
What do you call those things? Little fidget guys on
it go in the holes. Yeah, there's a word for
you told me and I can't remember.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
Okay, Well, we'll get.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
To it, but here's what we want you to know
about this design about Davidson. At this point, we might
think this is yet another story of a creative person
kind of getting the short shrift from these immoral corporate
folks taking credit for the work she did and so on.
But luckily that's not exactly the case here. Davidson, who
(19:26):
was alive today, maintains that she doesn't know how long
she worked on the swoosh.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
But she doesn't know how much she build them, right, yes,
how much did she build them? I think it was
like for seventeen and a half hours at the rate
of two dollars an hour, which is thirty five bucks
that she got in the check for this job, which
I did inflation calculator.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
It so we can do a boop and a dude.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
In today dollars, it's two hundred and sixty seven dollars
and thirty six days, which still is like low for
a design job. Usually a designer today, for that kind
of work would probably be getting fifty to one hundred
dollars an hour on a like freelance like low end kind.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
Of like help make you know, blue ribbon trophies. The
mom and pop.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
Sure.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
Yeah, so, this, unfortunately is a pretty common story. It
often happens in the world. But Davidson's tail ends a
little bit differently. She didn't profit immediately from her work
designing this thing, which she did do on her own.
But eventually the company came back and gave her a
proper thank thank you. They threw a huge party in
(20:35):
her honor, and I think they gave her stock.
Speaker 3 (20:37):
They did worth upwards of a million bucks, which is cool.
What does eventually mean though, By the way, are we
talking like the twenty fifth anniversary of the swoosh or
like a couple of years later.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Yeah, that's a good question, man, did she for instance, like,
did she write a letter? Did someone? Did someone get
mad at them? It was nineteen eighty three, so it
like ten years.
Speaker 3 (21:03):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
But here's the thing. I don't want to deraalize too much, Ben, but.
Speaker 3 (21:07):
Yeah, like, is it immoral to pay somebody the going rate.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
For a thing then becomes larger than life. You don't
know that it's going to become larger than life. It didn't.
I wouldn't say they took advantage of her at all.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
I don't think so, because you know, again, they're scrappy
at the point they were they were working together there,
they were more casual, you know what I mean, and.
Speaker 3 (21:31):
The company just wasn't yet what it had becomes. And
you could argue it wasn't like the swoosh all of
a sudden made Nike what it is. Nike made Nike
what it is, and they hustled and they got huge.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
And another aspect of this is, you know, you see
this in so many industries, what like podcasting right when
we make a lot of shows, you know, and it
could be tough to tell which ones work out, and
it's continually mystifying. That's why for a lot of agreements
in the creative world, you'll see people bake in stuff like, hey,
(22:06):
if my little jingle turns out to be a big
deal for Dell, I would like some more money.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
I would think that a lot of companies would really
bulk at that. Though.
Speaker 3 (22:18):
It is a very common negotiation tactic to give up
as few like points on the back end of things
as possible, because then you're tied to somebody forever. It
was treated like a work for hire situation. Then it's
like we paid you your rate, you delivered us the
product date to you, good day to you, go with God.
But it's really cool. It worked out great, kind of
like that what's the Flaming Hot Cheetos guy? It was
(22:40):
it was like he was a custodian. Here's a movie
chet called Flaming Hot Cheetos. It's about the story stick
with what works that?
Speaker 2 (22:50):
Did they hook him up?
Speaker 4 (22:51):
Like?
Speaker 2 (22:51):
Well, I think there's a happy ending there too, if
I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, there totally was. And those stories are inspiring.
I think it's cool to hear it. Uh. They also
this is strange flex Phil Knight also gives Carolyn Davidson
a gold and diamond ring engraved with the Nike swoosh.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
Wait, like as a marriage proposal? What are we talking? Unclear?
Speaker 1 (23:15):
I think it was just hey, this swoosh is good.
Remember the swoosh from earlier?
Speaker 2 (23:19):
Yeah, to jump in here.
Speaker 4 (23:21):
Actually, I don't think it's I don't think at this
as weird as maybe y'all do, because gold and diamond
rings are pretty common for when you win a championship.
So like with the Atlanta Braids won the world here
years ago, everyone above a certain level got a world
through his ring.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Max with the facts that sneaking in.
Speaker 4 (23:44):
And peacefull in Loh, it's just for you right now.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
The boom Also, Uh, one of the other weird things
he gave her chocolate swooshes. Anyway, I think this can
now it's insensual. Now now it's just I think he's
b nice.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
Half a dozen oysters. Well yeah, creepy foot.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
Massage, play some shod you know how it goes is
amazing and uh, before we move on, Max, well we've gotcha.
You have a bit of a Nike connection yourself.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
Right Yeah.
Speaker 4 (24:27):
So before I worked here at iHeart Our Heart Media
making podcasts, I was an independent podcast maker myself and
my original co host, this guy named Kevin Cool. Literally
his name, his last name is k u h l.
This guy is so cool that he donated his kidney
to his coworker at Nike. Yeah, he works. He lives
actually in Hillsboro, Oregon, works on the Nike Man campus. So, uh,
(24:52):
he does not like that I wear I'll say that
or Adidas. I We're gonna go with Adidas Potus.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
So if it's the combination of Audi and does right,
then it could be ADIDASIZ because it's plurals to things.
Speaker 3 (25:09):
But it doesn't sound right, I just say, do you
wear Adidas? I wear Adidas. It's like when you're talking
about a brand, I don't think you have to pluralize.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Yeah, it's kind of like pants. It's like, you know,
I always it always gives me a slight chuckle when
I'm talking to a very aesthetically centered fashionist to person
and they're like, Ooh, I love this new fault pant.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
I love a pant. It's a singular pant. It's just
the one leg last thing.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
Yeah, being pedantic here, if it's a company that makes
multiple things, you wouldn't say Adidas. You wouldn't pluralize it.
You say, I'm wearing shoes by Adidas. I'm wearing a
hoodie by Adidas. I'm wearing my Nike tennis shoes. But
you also think it's say Nikes.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
See, I don't even know.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
I think I gotta tell you, guys, I suspect English
may not be the best language.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
Well you think so.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
I've been studying it for quite some time, and I
have at best a rudimentary grasp how lot of rellly.
Speaker 3 (26:06):
Nillinginess to the English language, No question about that. I
had one little personal anecdotis want to mention. I actually
worked with Nike for a little bit developing a podcast
about Jordan's Air Jordan's and like that whole story of
Nike and just how they figured out how to like
(26:26):
get in on that branding and like you know, associate
themselves with this like up and coming superstar. They were
like glued to Jordan from like the earliest days and
then they got him wearing his own signature red shoes,
all of that stuff. There's a really cool documentary about it.
So I learned a lot about this stuff that I
wouldn't have normally learned. So I actually propose that maybe
(26:47):
we could even cover a larger, you know, part of
the Nike story because it really is pretty interesting. And
there's also you know, the connection to skateboard culture, graffiti culture,
like hip hop and all that stuff. I think, you know,
ridiculous and that it's ridiculously interesting.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
Absolutely, I agree. I think we're unanimous in this. The
motion carries uh maybe we can get ridiculous history branded
sneakers one day dream big right, talk to.
Speaker 4 (27:14):
My buddy Kevin. Actually, one of the best things about
no one's the one who works at Nike. You can
go into the Nike store and everything is forty percent off.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (27:21):
It is all like basically at cost maybe not at
costs per se, but like it's like four percent offs.
You can go there, like Okay, I'm gonna grab all
these really nice shoes and they're like fifty bucks snip.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
Can you just tell them, you know? Kevin? Yeah, well no,
you need to have a pass on your phone. It
is intense and like, yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
And Kevin, be cool. I bet you never heard that before.
I'll take some air Force one.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
You can have him. He was also in an episode
of Ephemeral Too nice.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
Wait our air Force one's Nike are okay good?
Speaker 2 (27:53):
Those are the Jordan's. They're a style of right exactly. Duh.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
So this woosh first comes out on something called the Nike.
It's one of the first shoes the brand ever makes
with their new name.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
Is it in fact a cleat or is ity just
being clever because it's capitalized so it's like the name
of the shoe. But I think of a cleat as
like golf shoes with the pointy things on the soccer
shoes soccer shoes or like, but some of them are
point to heer and sharper than others. Some of them
are just rubberized, and I would imagine that's probably more
we're looking at, because we actually also have another type
(28:25):
of shoe called the Nike Waffle Racer Love that supposedly
was the original prototype, was made by literally using a
waffle iron to make the treads on the bottom of
the shoe.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
Yeah, and it follows what Bill and Phil wanted to
do in the very beginning. They wanted to make running
shoes that were much lighter, that wouldn't weigh you down
when you were running track and field. And the Nike
waffle Racer is still around. It's shoe.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
I have a pair of these, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (28:54):
And you know, the cool thing about Nike too, is
like they they're always doing cool throwback kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
Oh yeah, and like they've got such a history.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
It's like Nintendo, you know, they've got this pantheon of characters,
but in this case, it's like, you know, designs from
throughout the ages. And we talked about this a little
bit because of course talking about design in terms of
the logo, but like the swoosh also just integrates really
well into the shoe design, you know, and they have
like different like color ways and stuff and like the
swish will be yellow and the shoe will be blue
(29:23):
and all of that stuff. And like I think I'm
I have actually become not a sneakerhead, Like I don't
have like a closet.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
Full of them, but I'm into the culture.
Speaker 3 (29:31):
I think it's really really cool and I appreciate the
aesthetics and the design that goes into it.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
And Atlanta is a great city for this.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
I love this stuff too, man. And the US public
loved Nikes when they came out and they there was
so there's this big thing in sneakerhead culture where the
exclusive drops are huge, huge deal.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
People buy the shoes as investments or flip them. Yeah,
and they flip them for sure. And they also made
they go through two extraordinary lengths to be able to
get an exclusive shoe of some sort.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
Ah.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
I just said shoe instead of shoes to our earlier point. Anyway,
So this is an old pattern for Nike. Consumers saw
this at the US Track and Field Olympic Trials in
Oregon and they couldn't get their hands on the shoe
until nineteen seventy three, and everybody wanted one at the time.
You could get the Nike Cortes which came out around
(30:31):
the Mexico Olympics in nineteen seventy two, that also had
the swoosh on it. Eventually, like you said, they link
up with athletes. That's kind of a story for another day.
They also land on some color schemes. Warm red became
the color choice for the official logo. And you know,
now you often see a black swoosh, but it was
(30:52):
meant to It was meant to hit your brain and
stay in your brain. And a lot of graphic design
professess have studied this right in depth.
Speaker 3 (31:04):
Uh well, it's like got a golden ratio ness of
it all nice, you know. And if you think about
like some of the most I guess sticky brands you
know over the years, oftentimes they have these concentric circles
when you break them down, like the like the Apple logo,
it's all concentric circles if you really like plot it
with like a compass or whatever. And I'm sure this
(31:26):
is part of a school of design that I'm not
aware of that was like being taught.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
You know, I did not know this is a job,
but it is a dream job for someone in max
This might be a dream job for you, man, we
want to introduce you to Todd Radom Radom Radom R
A d O M. He his job is to design
sports logos sports related logos. He's a veteran, that's all
(31:52):
he does. I didn't know that could be someone's career.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
That's pretty wild.
Speaker 4 (31:56):
I'll say that's cool on all of guys. I have
found the job that I want and it involved being.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
With you too. That's really sweet. Max. We love you too.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
Yeah, we'll do shout out to all the cool teachers
playing this for your students.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
So I think I'm probably gonna have to beep that way.
Speaker 3 (32:15):
Well yeah, okay, but you can also you could keep
my disgusted astonishment if you wish.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
Now people will just have to use their imagination. As
to what you said.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
It does feel like an abochal roller coaster when you.
Speaker 2 (32:27):
Edit it that way. Awesome.
Speaker 3 (32:28):
God, I want to buy some shoes I'm looking at
I'm just like Google and images of Nikes and now
I'm just like, these are so cool looking.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
There's a Nike store in the building where we used
to work. That's why the city market. So it's a good.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
One and they often, you know, get these drops that
we're talking about. There's also you mentioned the whole like
sneaker culture and flipping and all that. There's a really
neat place in Los Angeles and on Melrose called Flight Club,
which first of all, is an awesome name, and that's
the kind of place where you go to see like classics,
you know, and just you know, the Jordan's and whatever,
(33:01):
and it's just like, you know, they're one thousand dollars sometimes,
you know, for these like vintage pairs or these specialty
limited edition things because the genius and a lot of
brands do this, like Supreme and you know whatever is scarcity.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
They do these.
Speaker 3 (33:16):
Limited edition drops or collaborations with artists and they only
make so many. There's like a pair of Jordan's that's
like Ben and Jerry's theme that I think are some
of the most sought after ones that you can find.
Speaker 1 (33:27):
Yeah, you know what, That's what we should wrap up
on because full disclosure, folks, we wanted to explore some
more sneaker logos, but I think we all three of
us got so into the Nike story that we're gonna
keep this one just with Nike. I've got some fun
anecdotes about rebop pumps. We'll save that for an episode
(33:48):
in the future, but for now, Noah's thinking a good
way for us to end is to look at a
ridiculous list of the most expensive nikes in the world.
I'm just gonna ruin it. Number one is the solid
gold o Vo Air Jordan two million dollars Loise and
(34:09):
the shoes are kind of useless, and.
Speaker 3 (34:12):
The shoe that I was just talking about, by the way, Ben,
the Ben and Jerry's are called dunks, and they're kind
of cowprints on the side. They sort of like have
the blue sky and grass kind of logo that you
see on a Ben and Jerry's thing, and then the
yellow swoosh. I'm seeing pairs upwards of eighteen hundred dollars
because apparently they were just done in such limited supply.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
Yeah. Here's the thing, though, I think that counts a
little better toward our stats than the solid gold O
Vo Air Jordan. As any hip hop fan knows. When
you heard me say O v oh, that is Drake.
In twenty sixteen, Drake spent two million dollars to get
these custom Air Jordans, and the shoes are made of
(34:58):
solid gold. She's so you can't really do anything with
them except like look at them and say, oh, look
upon my sneaks. You mighty.
Speaker 3 (35:09):
Do you remember when Nike came out with the like
back to the Future to Nike shoe that was like
the ones where he they automatically laced up like sh
you know, he puts them on. They kind of looked
like ski boots. But they did briefly have a very
limited drop of these Nike you know, Back to the
Future shoes. And once again there's a company that got
(35:30):
in on the ground floor of pop culture to the
point where they get to put out a version of
their shoe that was in a movie.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
You know, I mean like.
Speaker 3 (35:39):
Truly I think also like Ripley and Aliens was wearing Nikes. Sure,
you know, like they just they've they've been in it
from the start. And then we're masters of cross promo
and brand Yes.
Speaker 1 (35:50):
Really good to product placement, incredibly imagined to.
Speaker 3 (35:54):
And by the way, those Back to the Future shoes
now go for about fifty eight thousand dollars.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
Yes, we want to continue exploring the story of not
just the Nikes, but of course Adidas. We as we've
been discussing for a while, so we'll get back with that,
but for now, thank you, of course to missus Davidson
for designing a logo that changed the world, and thanks
(36:20):
to our research associate Jeff Bartlett. Thanks to our superproducer
mister Max Too Fast Williams.
Speaker 2 (36:28):
Huge staks to Alex Williams as well, Yes they are.
Speaker 3 (36:31):
Related, who composed our theme, Christoph Rasciotas here in spirit
he's Jeff Coats roaming the wide world of podcasts wherever
she may be.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
Yeah, a big, big thanks to Gabe Lusier, and of
course thanks to Jonathan Strickland aka the quizz I wonder
what kind of what kind of tennis shoes?
Speaker 3 (36:52):
Jesus Louis Vaton Nike Airs three hundred and fifty two
thousand dollars.
Speaker 1 (36:59):
The Nike Max was, oh no, the Waffle Racing Flat
Moon shoe four hundred and thirty seven thousand, five hundred dollars.
Speaker 2 (37:07):
Unbelievable. We'll see you next time, folks.
Speaker 3 (37:17):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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