As seen in the August 2026 ‘Creative America at 250’ issue of Wallpaper*, we pay homage to seminal American design classics.
‘Well, I don’t love it, but it will grow on me.’ This was the reaction of Phil Knight, co-founder of Nike, when he first saw what would become the Nike ‘Swoosh’ – a tick-shaped emblem conceived by Carolyn Davidson to adorn the fledgling sportswear label’s footwear.
Davidson, who was then a design student at Portland State University, was paid $35 for the commission, billing the company $2 per hour for 17.5 hours of work. So the story goes, Knight was visiting the university when he overheard Davidson telling a friend she needed money for an oil painting class; over the coming months, she would create graphs and spreadsheets for the young label, before being drafted to create a logo similar to the stripes on other sporting brands’ footwear (Onitsuka Tiger, which was based in Japan and created running shoes, was one early competitor).
The Swoosh on a Nike Moon sneaker (£89.99)
Its signature elongated silhouette, which Davidson tested by holding tissue paper cut into early iterations of the design against the brand’s prototype shoes, was conceived to express a feeling of speed and agility – as if it was being viewed dashing past at speed. (Other commentators have posited its shape also evokes the wings of the ancient Greek goddess Nike, from whom the brand takes its name.)
And dash it did. In 1972, one year after Davidson submitted the original design, two of the top American finishers at the Boston Marathon crossed the line wearing Nike shoes marked with the design, and the Swoosh – which has appeared in various iterations, some with the italicised Nike logo attached – has been on the feet of countless champions on track, field, stadium and court ever since, an emblem of achievement which traverses both professional and amateur sport.
Davidson, who was eventually rewarded for her work with stocks in the company and a diamond ring engraved with the Swoosh motif, says she has enjoyed a life ‘under the radar’. ‘When I see the Swoosh on TV, and I turn on a game, and both teams are in Nike, I just get a good feeling,’ she said in 2011, which marked the emblem’s 40th anniversary. ‘Or if I turn a corner and run into a billboard, or if I watch the Olympics – I mean, it's just a good feeling inside.’
Now, the logo is one of the most recognised in the world, adorning not just footwear but a multitude of apparel, and reimagined over the past five decades – including a version bearing Nike’s ‘Just Do It’ tagline, another masterful piece of marketing. Nike’s various collaborators have also played with the Swoosh: most memorably, the late American multi-hyphenate designer Virgil Abloh, himself an expert in branding.
A series of shoes created by Virgil Abloh for Nike featuring the Swoosh motif, here photographed as part of the 2025 Paris exhibition ‘Virgil Abloh: The Codes’
The Off-White and Louis Vuitton creative directed created a childlike, hand-drawn version of the motif, which was printed onto T-shirts (‘Logo’ was written above it, in Abloh’s typically irreverent style), while his various footwear collaborations with Nike featured the Swoosh impossibly blown up or attached using Frankenstinian stitching (a demonstration of his three per cent rule, which argued seminal design classics could be shifted completely in meaning with just the tiniest of changes).
‘It did grow on me,’ Knight would later admit. ‘What we wanted it to stand for was speed, which it did and still does. But now it means much more than that.’
This article appears in the August 2026 Issue of Wallpaper*, available now in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today