THE NIKE 78 PROJECT
By Bobby Riley | June 9th, 2010
Fleet feet: Justus Oehler's design for NIKE78.
Since its founding in 1978, Nike has led the way in developing trainers as state-of-the-art athletic footwear, as well as expressions of personal style and creativity. NIKE78 is a new project created by London College of Communications student Paul Jenkins that celebrates Nike’s legacy of design innovation. Using shoes donated to the school from a Nike concept store, Jenkins sent pairs to 78 designers, artists and other creatives and asked them to challenge the function of the shoes, using sport as inspiration. The ‘78’ celebrates the year of Nike’s founding, and the project officially launched on May 30, Nike’s birthday. The resulting designs are being posted to an online gallery.
A selection of the resulting concepts are shown here. Shown top is Wieden + Kennedy TokyoLAB’s contribution, which sees a Nike shoe reconfigured as a fish tank. A film of the shoe-tank in action is shown above. “The shoes we received were Nike Air Max 360, which emphasises the air in the soles more than any other Nike shoe,” say W+K TokyoLAB. “So we decided to create something based on the concept of air. What we did was keep the soles filled with air as is, but take off the upper part of the shoe and use it to mould a clear material into that shape. This became an aquarium for goldfish.”