The Mother of the Nike Swoosh
It was a female artist who created one of the most iconic brand logos of our time. In 1971 Carolyn Davidson was a graphic design student at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon at the same time that Phil Knight (Co-founder and CEO of Nike ) was also there teaching accounting. Knight had overheard Davidson talking about how she couldn’t afford art supplies. He then asked Davidson to do some work creating graphs and pie charts for what was then Blue Ribbon Sports, Inc.
This led her to do some graphic design work for the company and in 1971 Knight needed a logo for the company’s new launch of running shoes. At first they wanted a stripe and that “had something to do with movement”. She presented a total of 5 designs, one of them being the now infamous Nike Swoosh (resembling a wing and Nike, being the Greek goddess of victory). Knight and his co-founder selected the Swoosh stating that he hated it at first, but would learn to love it. Carolyn Davidson was paid $35 for her graphic design of the Nike Swoosh.
Don’t worry, as the company grew, she later received 500 stock shares during Nike’s IPO in 1980. And that’s how Carolyn Davidson’s simple yet innovative design (supposedly it took her 17 hours), which became a global brand identity, sold for $35, only to make her a millionaire years later.
