An afternoon at Nike...

Last week I was invited out to Nike to participate in their Thirst Thursday employee party. Carolyn Davidson, the designer of the swoosh was present as the guest of honor. Because she was a Portland State design student when she developed Nike's legendary mark, the organizers thought it would be fitting to bring out some local designers and artists to customize some Nike bags. Mia Nolting, Ryan Bubnis and I were given the task of customizing white Nike iD messenger bags. The embellished bags would then be auctioned off to benefit the Children's Cancer Association. Armed with our tools of choice, we went to work customizing the bags in our respective styles. Mia worked in Sharpie, Ryan in acrylic paint and I had an assortment of paint pens. To prepare, I did some sketching in my book to get some ideas to reference in case I drew a blank on the spot.


It was a 101 degree afternoon, but I was fueled by RebBull and ready to go. I decided to wing it for my first bag, just flowing from the top of my head. The paint pens worked great on the bag material, which appeared to be a sturdy nylon. The Nike ID bag was a great canvas to draw on.


For my second bag I referenced some of the sketches I had prepared beforehand. I wanted to give my personal take on Nike culture, treating this one as almost a commissioned piece. I had a lot of fun with both of the bags. Working in the creative field, it's easy to take art for granted. Most people don't get to see art being made so it's a special treat to watch artists doing their thing. This is the second time that I've done art in a live setting, it's very exhilarating to get peoples' feedback on the spot. I really enjoy doing this and hope I'll get another chance to do something similar in the future.


After finishing two bags I took a walk around to see what my comrades had been up to:

Ryan Bubnis


Mia Nolting

We finished off the event with a joint collaboration bag:


The event was a great success. It was a lot of fun spending some time outside of the studio in the sun. We all got some great exposure within the Nike community. All of our bags were auctioned off. Along with the bags that were customized by Nike's in house designers, the auctions raised over $7000 dollars for the Children's Cancer Association. The three of us were all PNCA alums, so it was a great chance to represent alma matter. I'm very thankful for the opportunity and honored that my work was able to help such a great cause.

Fantasy Custom Kicks - Micron Hero P-Rod II's

Time for a mini-tutorial. It's no secret I like sneakers. Using the magical vector tools the Adobe Illustrator offers I'll make my own custom Micron Hero P-Rod 2 colorway. Here goes:


Take a photo of the shoes you want to customize. Make sure to get a good angle where all of the essential details are visible.
Place the photo into illustrator, isolating it on it's own layer, with template selected in layer options. Use this to get your linework, making sure to capture all of parts. The laces are crucial.
Once the linework is established you have a perfect template to lay in any colorway you could imagine. For this one I used the color scheme from the homepage of my website.

After the colorway is established you can go in and add details. I added a gradient to the swoosh to make it appear glossy on the screen. Shadows are created using a black vector fill with the opacity adjusted to allow the bottom layers to show through. A good way to create complex shadows is to layer black fills at 20% opacity, at this low opacity they behave almost like watercolor washes.

I used halftones to add texture to the shoe. I figure it's a good way to add a synthetic visual texture to the illustration. I plan on doing more with this, perhaps adding in stitching, more graphics, custom flourishes. Illustrator really allows you to do whatever you want.

(Disclaimer: I don't work for Nike, nor have I ever been employed by them. I'm just dorking around in Illustrator, making my own fantasy colorways. On that note, if Nike wants to put me to work, heck yeah, I'm down.)