NIKE TEE SHIRTS
I designed hundreds and hundreds…and hundreds of Nike tee shirts. If I had to guesstimate, I designed at least 500-600 that were actually commercialized and sold in. Triple that for options presented. Naturally with that many designs the quality ranged anywhere from amazing to spectacular…oh okay…I created some real stinkers too.
The styles ranged from highly marketable to batshit lunacy
I knew when to push the boundaries and when to clamp down and create stable money makers. The Nike McStripe tee upper left was the all time top selling Nike tee by the time I left the company. The Presto tee left is an early example of how I would push boundaries to keep the brand turning heads. The following examples sniff at the broad categories of tees I created.
Keep The Lights On With The Basics
These are the huge cash cows, the basic seasonal Nike reads one step up from a plain olde Swoosh on a tee. These are just a sample of the tees I created that earned $1 million or (much) more for Nike.
The "Keep The Lights On" tees could be seen all over. I saw this fella at a drag race in Woodburn. He is wearing what, at the time, was the top selling Nike tee ever.
Years, like 15 years, after I created this tee I saw this young man wearing my design at a bagel shop.
Basics Plus
These are still in the basic corporate read zone, but they are amped up with special treatments.
Reinvent The Basics: Periodic Table Of The Futura
The Nike Futura mark is one of the staples of Nike’s seasonal tee offerings. By 2007, sales for the tee had been sliding; it had become stale. It happens. My art director wanted a senior designer, he volunteered me, to re-examine the most basic, lowest price point tees and see what we could do to revive them.
I believed a big part of the problem was color: We would offer perhaps 10 colorways per season that were always limited and often felt…arbitrary. I developed a system to solve this problem. I created the Periodic Table of the Futura. The idea was to enable designers to drive a seasonal and connected color story while simultaneously creating an economical and efficient way to expand our color offerings. It would also allow retailers to customize their purchase orders to their needs.
The table works by picking 12 seasonally relevant Futura color combinations (they go from top to bottom on the table), then selecting 12 tee colors (they go from left to right). The result is 144 easily executable colorways instead of the usual 10 or 12. If we set up production for 12, why not 144? To drive the point home I had all 144 printed and laid out in various combinations to demonstrate the power of the periodic table to merchandising and sales. They loved it. Designers loved it. Retailers loved it. Futura was reborn.
Reinvent The Basics: Four To Get One
During the same season as the Periodic Table of The Futura I also came up with these two tees to freshen things up. These were a horrific pain in the butt to get printed properly, but once we nailed it they looked great.
Elevated Basics
The class of tee was a higher end offering. It was still a basic Nike read but with an extra bit of spice–higher quality tee blanks and perhaps an overall pattern print.
"Phys-Ed" Style
Examples of the classic gym or camp style tee. Sport highlighted more than "Nike." This is one of the bedrock styles, always sells well.
I designed this tee around 2005–ish. On the evening of September 9, 2011 I saw this gentleman wearing it while he worked at a convenience store on Burnside Avenue in Portland.
Stepping Sideways A Bit
Here we step away from the branded "corporate reads" and dance into some hand done type. Some these examples were created outta thin air and some were influenced by other faces, but these are all typefaces I drew.
Stray From The Basics
This group of tees is where we start to go from broad appeal and volume to more individualized personality. These tees are still sport themed and make a statement, verbally or visually, they may sell less but they turn heads.
These were my shoes. I looked down one day and thought, "these have seen better days." Then this tee hit me, so I went home put on some socks and trampled through the garden and photographed the result.
Yup. Nike is a footwear company, so the shoe tie-in tee was quite a common item. The shoe soles lower left were made of molded silicon. I always sought new and interesting treatments for tees.
These tees are inspired by a vague memory I have of seeing a Dr. J advertisement in a comic book when I was really young.
Football and Baseball on the brain.
At this point we are definitely not in the basics anymore.
Flee From The Basics: The Wild Card Line
The “Wild Card” category was a design-driven tee concept invented by me, my art director, and two of my fellow senior designers. We wanted to push the boundaries of graphics beyond easily dollarable and safe styles. The goal was to keep the brand fresh by embracing Nike’s maverick ways. We sought to take chances and push the Nike ideals of athleticism, humor, irreverence, and attitude. For this particular season we chose a Pop Art story to harken back to the days of Nike’s early germination. These jokers are wearing my contributions to the line.
Here is a better view of one of the Wild Card tees. Pop Pujols. The cardinal on the front is embroidered.
Another sample from the Wildcard line. For the first iteration of the line we wanted the company to get behind us and perhaps expand the concept into other categories. So we did a poster campaign around the Nike campus to promote the idea. Here is one of my tees and its companion poster. The shiny bits on the tee are a foil application.
Because you can't have enough tees with Eagles and Snakes battling over a football. The Wildcard line wasn't bound by traditional price points–so I could stretch my wings and try some fun stuff. This is like an 8 or 9 color embroidery, fun–not cheap!
Yup. Wildcard could get goofy. The Steve Prefontaine tee was meant to be an homage to Milton Glaser and the Brady Bunch. To this day I still fret whether my homage to Glaser ended up being more of a "bite." Hmmmm…
Blowing Off The Doors: The L.E. Line
This line was about as far from "the basics" as we could get! This was about impact first, sales second. I was instrumental in building this apparel line in the early 2000s.
I designed the tees above in various 3D programs and then belt printed the results to cover the whole front of the garment. Not subtle–wasn't meant to be!
The goal the Limited Edition line was to really push boundaries and make Nike cool and young again. My art director told me to go home for a week, stay away from campus, drink some beers, dive into my computer, and let my mind run free. It was during this time that I came up with crazy basketball player full print tees. The direction we were following was to channel the Planet Gods of Venus, Mars, Mercury, etc. This line was a precursor to Nike’s lifestyle (Jordan) and action sport (SB, 6.0) categories. Before the “LE” line, the word “fashion” was a bad word at Nike. With LE we dove in with gusto!