Swoosh Man

As a junior designer at Nike I was asked to come up with some concepts for a Swoosh Man mascot who would appear at basketball games with Michael Jordan and other sponsored athletes. Early days at Nike I worked on Hockey skates, eyewear, protective gear, off-road roller blades, all kinds of fun projects. I created some large format sketches which I then presented to Phil Knight. He green lighted one of the concepts and then I worked with Warner Bros’ costume designer to create the suit. At some point I lost creative control and the design became maybe less ‘technical’ or serious than I wanted it to be and became more decorative. I visited the Burbank studios to see the suit being sculpted right next to the latest Batman movie suits. In addition I designed a concept for a large, remotely controlled robot that would join Swoosh Man on the court and would launch basketballs or T-shirts into the crowd. It’s important to know that the Swoosh Man concept and robot were meant to cater to the Japanese Culture originally as comic style books were created that pre dated the costume and mascot. This drove the styling and design decisions I made. Very cool experience overall but I feel the suit could have been much better.