Designing a new brand identity at the world's leading athletic company
COMPANY: NIKE, Inc. INDUSTRY: Athletics + Finance ROLE: Brand Designer ORG: Nike Global Finance
Overview
Nike's Global Finance division was doing a major overhaul of their processes worldwide and part of that budget was allotted to hire a Brand Designer to create a unique brand identity. They hired me two months into the process and I had exactly one month to get this launched in seven geographies worldwide including Converse HQ in Boston. All they had was the name, "FutureFi" (the Future of Nike Finance), and a tight deadline.
Goal
The human problem at hand was that every team at Nike had their own brand identity except Global Finance — Golf, Jordan, even Legal. I needed to make this team feel like true Nike employees with their own unique branding. I then needed to design swag and even custom bicycles like the rest of the teams around campus were riding. Finally, i needed to create brand guidelines and executive presentation decks that were easy to use for people who might not necessarily understand technical design terms or practices.
My Role
I went full heads-down mode for the next 14 days enveloping myself deep in inspiration both around Nike's inspiring campus and from classic marks that stood the test of time. When you live in Portland, it's hard not to be inspired by Aaron Draplin. So, I took his method and sketched 200-300 ideas trying to get down as many "F" "Future" "Finance" "Motion" "Sport" "Nike" ideas on paper as possible. I met daily with my marketing manager and after a week of sketching, together we refined these rough concepts down to top 10 solid ideas. By the end of the second week and after several rounds of iteration between my manager and director, I had three polished logos which I presented to the top Finance VPs and stakeholders including the CFO / Executive VP, Don Blair. Though I walked through a full brand presentation, they knew which one was the winner as soon as it was revealed. That's the one you see on this page. They gave the green light to fund the full brand initiative based on that mark and the rest was history.
Outcome
The logo was done in under two weeks and off to the printers for the global launch of the new FutureFI brand. Brand guidelines, branded Sharepoint site, office resources, swag, and executive presentation deck templates were created and successfully launched in seven geographies within the 30 day deadline. My contract was extended because more teams within finance wanted their own identities. I went on to create logos and branded collateral for teams including SWIFT, Global LEAN, Treasury, and Accounting.
