Swoosh! There It Is. In Fact, Swooshlike Logos Are Everywhere - TheStreet TheStreet Swoosh! There It Is. In Fact, Swooshlike Logos Are Everywhere Net firms emphasize their creativity, but when it comes to company logos, many opt for the tried-and-true. George Mannes Jul 4, 2000 7:01 AM EDT The Internet is supposed to be the cradle of innovation. So why do four out of five dot-coms have virtually the same logo? Yes, it's true. A tireless investigation by TheStreet.com reveals that most Net companies -- you know, those groundbreaking birthplaces of revolutionary ideas -- behave like sheep when it comes to designing the graphics that represent their corporate identity. Start looking at the bottom of full-page ads in The Wall Street Journal, or check out your handy-dandy collection of Internet executives' business cards, and you'll see It. And you'll see It again and again. What exactly is It? Call up any graphic designer, and he or she will tell you. Ask Richard Lubbers, of Web-logo designer HitSpring, for example, if he notices any, um, common element among Internet logos.

Without any prompting, Lubbers instantly identifies It. It's obvious to him. Painfully so. It's that arc you see everywhere. That partial ellipse. That space-age boomerang. "It's either kind of a Nike swoosh or an orbit kind of a theme," he says. "It's such a cliche." Lubbers says clients request this peculiar curve all the time for their logos. "But I try to steer them away from that, if possible," he says, "because the look is so saturated." Yes, the swoosh is everywhere. You got your swooshes on the left. You got your swooshes on the right. You got your swooshes up on top, too: to the right... ...up and perfectly symmetrical... ...and back and to the left. You got your planetary orbital swooshes. You got your double swooshes. And you got your swoosh oddities. The bouncing-ball swoosh... ...the dotted line... ...and the looks-kind-of-like-a-cross-between-a-ticker-tape-and-the-devil's-tail swoosh. So what is it that all these firms find so appealing about ellipses?

Well, it all comes down to the purpose of logos, or marks, as they're sometimes called. Like AT&T ( T ) with its globe, like CBS and its stylized eye, a logo is a distinctive, memorable company identifier -- one that, preferably, hints at what a company does. In an economy built on information and speed, this streamlined boomerang shape fits right in. "What it's generally meant to communicate is the flow and transfer of information and ideas from one point to another," says Jonathan Taylor, creative director of Brand Farm, an Internet incubator. "People like arcs. ... They like to see a certain fluid movement." Though he's antiswoosh, Lubbers does see its power. "It looks like the future," the designer says. "It has almost a space race look to it. Anything having to do with space and satellites; it all connotes a high-tech look. And it's so well understood by the public that it's an easy way to make your company look like it's cutting-edge. ... It's almost too easy." In fact, ellipses have looked cutting-edge for decades, ever since people started using them to represent the atom.

And it's likely Internet companies will gravitate toward ellipses for decades more. Jana Anderson, who heads graphic-design firm studio A in San Francisco, says the reason so many Net companies fall back on the swoosh is that it is so hard to represent the Internet graphically. "There's nothing to grab onto. There's nothing there. It's space," she says. "The visual metaphors tend to be very cliche because of that." Companies that use curves and arcs to represent their Internet connection, says Anderson, are being too vague, logowise. "The focus is sort of in the wrong place," she says. "They're designing the mark for the medium, not necessarily what the product or service is." But try telling that to companies with swooshy logos. Talk to representatives of any company with an elliptically themed logo, and they'll tell you the same thing: It's a cliche when everybody else uses the shape, but when we use it in our mark, it's a brilliant, meaningful, unique incarnation of what makes us special. As Michelle Wu, CEO of incubator China Internet Group, puts it, "A lot of companies have this... thing. But it doesn't mean much.

For us, it truly represents what we do. ... I like the logo a lot." But others are growing disenchanted. "It's worked well for us," says Joe Michaels, chief marketing officer of e-commerce firm Nexchange. "But the next time we create a corporate identity package, we're going to seek something that's more distinctive." Nike Logo, the "Swoosh" symbol - FAMOUS LOGOS FAMOUS LOGOS 25 Sep 2008 | Famous Logos Nike Inc. has proven itself in every corner of the competitive business world. Starting from the athletic shoes to the apparel and accessories, Nike has proven that it rules the sportswear industry. Its powerful logo has had a massive impact in helping establish their strong brand recognition. It’s hard to find an individual who does not recognize the Nike logo. For decades, the logo has established a well stable and recognized attitude and still holds the ground strong enough to pursue further. The Nike logo, also known as the “Swoosh”, is an emblem created in 1971 by an outstanding graphic design student at Portland State University, namely Carolyn Davidson . She started as a freelance worker for the company, Blue Ribbon Sports, owned by Phil Knight.

Working together they selected the mark now known as the Swoosh worldwide. The Swoosh symbol, can be described as simple, fluid and fast. These words depict the Nike logo that has successfully grown to be one of the most influential insignia in the world. Design Elements of Nike Logo: Nike logo illustrates an imposing image on its spectators through its solid features. Shape of the Nike Logo: The Nike logo represents the wing in the renowned statue of the Greek Goddess of victory, Nike, who served as the cause of motivation for the distinguished and audacious warriors. Initially, the mark was regarded as “the strip” but was later named as “Swoosh”, which describes the fiber used for the Nike shoes. Color of the Nike Logo: Dull orange shade is used for the Nike logo which demonstrates the strong corporate image of Nike Inc. Through years, Nike logo has revolutionized to some extent. Its color had been once transformed to strong black. Font of the Nike Logo: The Nike logo also features its identification name, which is inscribed in the simple bold font. The simplicity of the font in Nike logo portrays the brilliant commercial picture of the Nike Inc.

Related blog post(s): I love nike best sports wear in the world Leave a Reply All Logos: Nike Logo All Logos Nike Logo Nike Inc. has proven itself in every corner of the competitive business world. Starting from the athletic shoes to the apparel and accessories, Nike has confirmed that it rules the sportswear industry. This position has been accomplished by making a strong impact on the audience through its powerful logo. It’s quite hard to find an individual who does not recognize the Nike logo. From decades, Nike logo has established a well stable and recognized attitude and still holds the ground strong enough to pursue further. The Nike logo, also known as the “Swoosh”, is an emblem created in 1971 by an outstanding graphic design student at Portland State University, namely Carolyn Davidson. She started as a freelance worker for the company, Blue Ribbon Sports, owned by Phil Knight. Working together they selected the mark now known as the Swoosh worldwide. Nike logo, the Swoosh, can be merely described as Simple, Fluid and Fast. These words depict the Nike logo that has successfully grown to be one of the most influential insignia throughout the world.

Design Elements of Nike Logo: Nike logo illustrates an imposing image on its spectators through its solid features. Nike logo is a corporate identity that has confirmed its best being. Shape of the Nike Logo: Nike logo, the Swoosh, represents the wing in the renowned statue of the Greek Goddess of victory, Nike, who served as the cause of motivation for the distinguished and audacious warriors. Initially, the mark was regarded as “the strip” but was later named as “Swoosh”, which describes the fiber used for the Nike shoes. Color of the Nike Logo: Dull orange shade is used for the Nike logo which demonstrates the strong corporate image of Nike Inc. Through years, Nike logo has revolutionized to some extent. Its color had been once transformed to strong black. Font of the Nike Logo: The Nike logo also features its identification name, which is inscribed in the simple bold font. The simplicity of the font in Nike logo portrays the brilliant commercial picture of the Nike Inc.

The Swoon of the Swoosh - The New York Times The New York Times Magazine |The Swoon of the Swoosh Search Continue reading the main story For some time now, the Nike swoosh has been showing up in the oddest of places, dropped like an inadvertent product plug amid the news of the day. Just before 39 members of the Heaven's Gate cult swallowed a suicide brew last year, they laced up their new black Nikes for a post-mortem chase of a spaceship they believed was trailing the Hale-Bopp comet. Benjamin Walker, a victim of the Springfield, Ore., school shooting in May, was so heavily swooshed in T-shirt and cap in the photo released by authorities that media outlets felt compelled to crop him to a tight facial mug. And then there's O.J. Simpson, the last athlete any company in the world wants to endorse its product, recently seen wearing a Nike cap. Sports are the heart of American culture, says Philip H. Knight, Nike chairman and co-founder. He has believed this ever since he started peddling waffle-soled running shoes out of his car trunk more than 30 years ago.

He spoke then in a language understood only by people who could run a mile in less than five minutes. Now his company slogans are uttered by presidents and schoolchildren the world over. By Nike's own research, the swoosh brand is recognized by 97 percent of Americans, and every man, woman and child in the United States spends an average of $20 a year on the company's products. But be careful what you wish for: the swoosh, never more ubiquitous, is in turnaround. Having plastered the world with a corporate icon rivaled perhaps only by Coca-Cola's cursive, Nike is trying desperately to tone it down, hide it, possibly even lose it. The week before an anxious annual shareholders meeting, Nike still looks in the mirror and sees a sleek rebel, but others see a bully with a beer gut. ''You can make a lot of mistakes around here, but the brand is sacred,'' says Knight. ''I messed that up.'' Continue reading the main story Knight is pacing inside the John McEnroe Building, the intensive-care ward for the ailing swoosh and the center of power inside the earthen berm at Nike World Headquarters in Beaverton, Ore.

He is a reddish-haired, somewhat bulge-eyed hypercompetitor; at 60, he still runs regularly. When sneakers became a cultural force more than a decade ago, Knight was dubbed the most powerful man in sports. But he has been angry much of this year, hearing his company described as the symbol for everything that is wrong not only with sports but also with global capitalism itself. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Knight checks in frequently with Gordon Thompson, the company's lead designer. Thompson's current challenge is the biggest yet: how to persuade a new generation of consumers to latch onto a brand trying to reinvent itself after two years of hard hits. ''Hard to believe,'' says Thompson, showing a chart that illustrates the evolution of the company logo. ''But the swoosh has been a stand-alone logo for only four years. We were growing and growing and growing here in Beaverton, and I guess we didn't totally realize what happened to this thing that was supposed to be just a sports logo.'' On new shoes, Thompson has started to shrink the icon down to just a wisp of a swoosh, barely visible.

''The question we've been asking ourselves a lot here,'' he says, is whether we should just go ahead and take the swoosh off. That's been a pretty hefty debate.'' Just a year ago, on Nike's 25th birthday, coming off the best financial 12 months in the company's history, there was no hint of a future without the swoosh. Its fate, the company said, was linked to the march of sports into every corner of the planet. ''The 'swooshification of the world' should more appropriately be deemed the Sportsification of the world,'' Nike officials wrote in the company's annual report for 1997. ''We will mature in tandem with the inexorable penetration of sports into the global psyche.'' Brave words. But, as it turns out, the swoosh and sports do not always move in tandem. Profits at Nike, the world's leading athletic-shoe-and-apparel maker, plunged 49 percent this fiscal year, despite record sales of $9.6 billion. (More and more Nikes are being sold by discounters, lowering the profit margin.) The stock price has dropped more than 50 percent this year from highs of a year before.

Two months ago, Nike reported its first quarterly loss in 13 years, prompting the largest layoffs in company history and a teary apology from Knight. Nike still sells more than 160 million pairs of athletic shoes a year, and nearly one out of every two pairs in the United States. But the company had pegged its future growth to Asia, where Nike is one of the most visible American victims of the ongoing economic crisis. Worldwide, Nike has about one-third of the total market for athletic shoes. Its nearest competitors, Adidas and Reebok, are far behind in the United States and abroad, but Adidas is gaining ground. And with Michael Jordan, Nike's franchise player, bound for retirement either this year or next, the company has yet to discover, or manufacture, anyone even close to him. Those are just a few of Nike's problems. Purists say that the company has corrupted sport. Critics of Nike's overseas factories abound, citing the more than 500,000 workers who often earn about $1.50 a day.

Some of these critics peg Nike's current woes to their own efforts to tarnish the swoosh -- or the swooshsticka, as the more rabid Nike-haters call it. ''We figured out two years ago that the only way to make our campaign against Nike's labor practices work was to try to make the swoosh uncool,'' says Medea Benjamin, co-director of Global Exchange, a San Francisco-based human rights group. From Day 1, Nike has insisted it is a company for athletes. But the greatest secret of the sports-footwear-and-apparel business is that most of the product is bought by people who may want to be like Mike or Ken Griffey Jr. or the Brazilian soccer star Ronaldo, but seldom leave the couch. ''The reason the basketball shoes have worked so well is because 80 percent of the people who buy them never set foot on a basketball court -- it's a fashion statement,'' says Vince Francom, a footwear-industry analyst in Seattle. ''The problem with fashion is that tastes change very quickly. There's a big backlash against Nike under way.

The skateboard generation doesn't want to wear Nikes because their fathers wear them.'' And it is the swoosh that has become emblematic of all of Nike's troubles: a fashion statement losing its edge; a sports pyramid that starts with cheap day labor and ends with poor kids trying to pony up $140 for the shoes, and the lost innocence of young athletes. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Phil Knight and his closest executives have heard so much criticism that they have started to parody it. They've hung anti-Nike cartoons all over their walls and filled their annual report with consumers' hate mail. So the question inside the berm is not whether the swoosh has gotten Nike in trouble, but how quickly to act. ''We're a company founded by distance runners -- some of them pretty slow -- so we have a certain amount of patience,'' wrote Knight in his most recent letter to shareholders. ''Nonetheless, we prefer to be timed by a stopwatch, not a calendar.'' Inside Nike's main laboratory in the Michael Jordan Building, shoe scientists in lab coats watch slow-motion X-ray videos of how the 26 bones in the human foot react to different strides.

Product developers are finishing a shoe modeled after a goat's hoof -- the Goatster, they nicknamed it, designed to grip vertical rock terrain. It's a niche-market shoe, of course, but who knows how many eighth-graders might want to have the latest in extreme-sport fashions. Nike is also preparing to sell snowboards, boots, hockey sticks and golf equipment but has dropped a curious new baseball glove. About one-third of the company's sales last year came from clothes, gear, watches, eyewear and other products not worn on the foot. The swoosh is no longer being cloned along with fresh product; instead, new logos, with separate identities, are sprouting from within the berm. A new line of Michael Jordan shoes will soon march out of the factories, carrying the Jordan ''Jumpman'' logo. (For the recent fiscal year, every major category of Nike footwear sold in America suffered a decline in sales, except one -- the Jordan brand, which increased 57 percent.) An Alpha line of shoes and clothing, vaguely defined as ''innovative,'' will be unveiled later this year, carrying a new logo -- five dots, a sort of elongated ellipsis. Everything, it seems, is in play.

Nike's most famous slogan, ''Just Do It,'' disappeared for a time this year after a decade-long run. As it turns out, women did not take to the admonition quite as enthusiastically as men. ''I Can'' worked better with women, but it also sounded something like a Special Olympics plug, and didn't go over so well with men. ''The saying 'I can' sounds so weak!'' one man wrote to Nike this year. ''And I ain't weak.'' Just what is the company slogan these days? ''We use them all,'' says Lee Weinstein, Nike's chief spokesman. From the outside, the Nike campus looks like a fortress hunkered among the forests and office parks of suburban Portland. From the inside, it feels like a jock's version of ''The Truman Show,'' with militantly casual ex-athletes and creative overachievers hustling between buildings named for legendary Nike stars. Knight says the idea behind the berm was to create a world unto its own for Nike employees when they returned from road trips -- a sort of Vatican for the missionaries of sneakers. It is also supposed to be a place of inspiration, recovery and swoosh indoctrination for Nike's army of athletes.

Athletes with an attitude have always been at the top of the fashion food chain at Nike. At a time when other shoe companies are backing away from endorsements, Nike is still building its roster. It now has more than 3,000 athletes in the fold worldwide, including 72 percent of the players in the National Basketball Association, 60 percent in Major League Baseball and half the players in the National Football League. More than 200 universities fly the flag of swoosh. The multipierced illustrated man of basketball, Dennis Rodman, was once a Nike guy, but the company revoked his swoosh. ''He's a great player,'' Knight says, ''but he's crazy.'' Shaquille O'Neal, the telegenic center with the high-wattage smile, showed up a few years ago at the Nike campus for a get-acquainted session -- swathed in Reebok gear. Things went downhill from there. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Knight likes winners, of course, but rebels are closest to his heart. The N.B.A. tried to ban the first Air Jordans (they weren't considered regulation sneakers), much to the delight of Knight.

There was cheering inside the John McEnroe Building when Casey Martin, the disabled golfer whose cause Knight took up when it looked like a long shot, challenged the golf establishment and became the first man to play the United States Open in a powered cart. ''What we are all about,'' Knight says, ''is being against the establishment.'' Yes, but what happens when you are the establishment, when the swoosh shows up in more country clubs than asphalt alleys? Nike's response has been to try new ways of ''branding.'' Nike, of course, is not alone in this pursuit. The idea is simply to create a connection between consumer and product, a link often having nothing to do with what is actually being sold. Nike has always tried to sell something more than leather and nylon, promoting the swoosh as a personal statement. But the retail world is littered with once-thriving brandings that have ended badly. L.A. Gear, for example, was an upstart sneaker company that rode the aerobics craze to dizzying heights, then crashed when it tried to put its label on too many other things. Because the swoosh is so ubiquitous, Nike executives realize they now have a hard time using a renegade posture.

And Adidas, the German company that was the establishment when young Nike came pounding at the door, has succeeded in an otherwise flat retail-shoe environment by capitalizing on its underdog status to Nike. ''A lot of kids think they are now discovering Adidas for the first time, as it becomes the anti-Nike,'' says Bob McGee, the editor of Sporting Goods Intelligence. Further complicating Nike's task, the company's ''brand soul'' has been especially hurt by the spate of negative stories about its overseas labor practices and its defensive posture. ''What's happening to Nike is extremely dangerous for any brand,'' says John Bowen, a New York consultant and writer on brand resonance. ''Consumers today are more concerned about the culture of the organization behind the brand. They want to feel good about the company they are buying from.'' Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up Privacy Policy I draped myself in borrowed swoosh during the lunch hour one day and went for a run with the president of Nike, Tom Clarke. A former college track coach with a Ph.D. in biomechanics, he is fast, pleasant and open about the company's problems.

Nike, the global dominator, can still be cool, he told me, if it sends the right message to the right audience. ''A lot of the coolness factor comes from how you communicate,'' says Clarke, 47, gliding along at a 7-minute-mile pace, slow for him. ''I get people who come up to me all the time and say, 'Man, I did not understand that ad at all.' I think that's a good thing.'' He has a point. But as I ran through the streets of Beaverton with the latest in swoosh-covered tank top, shorts and shoes, I did not feel cool. I felt like a two-legged billboard for a $9 billion company. The question of how Nike lost some of its coolness is an open debate inside the berm. Most Nike executives simply blame the ubiquity of the swoosh, the icon inspired by the wing of a Greek goddess. It was dreamed up in 1971 by a design student in Portland, a woman Knight hired when he was still moonlighting as an accounting teacher. It cost him $35.

''Clearly, we had the swoosh on everything and it was just ridiculous,'' says Mark Parker, a Nike vice president for global footwear. ''I remember walking into Texas Stadium, and they had taken the swoosh and put it on the stairs, on cheerleaders, on the walls. I said, 'Oh, my God, this is our worst nightmare.''' Others blame a humor lapse in some of the recent ads. Self-important to a fault, they showed perfectly chiseled world-class athletes, buck naked -- an attempt to sell Nike athletic wear. But if the swoosh does not light up advertising focus groups the way it used to, Nike has another icon that has yet to show a downside: Michael Jordan. Last June, in the midst of Nike's deepening troubles, came the most glorious 59 seconds of the year for the company. Just when it was said that the greatest person ever to play the game was past his pull date, the old man did it again. In Game 6 of the N.B.A. Finals, Nike's franchise player singlehandedly pulled off a victory -- and the championship -- while wearing a pair of Air Jordan XIV's, which retail for about $150.

The shoe sailed out of stores. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Clinging to Jordan as long as possible, Nike may bring out a line of Jordan casual shoes, following up with everything from Jordan socks to suits. Nike executives figure that if Tommy Hilfiger and Ralph Lauren, neither of whom ever did anything dramatic on a basketball court, can sell billions of dollars worth of clothing, the world's best-known athlete can do the same, or much better. If Nike takes this step with Jordan, it would mark a huge leap into relatively unfamiliar retail territory. The last time the company tried such a thing, selling so-called ''brown shoes'' in the mid-1980's, it was clobbered. Knight says the company learned its lesson. Still, Jordan's name is so strong that Nike cannot seem to resist what they see as his Midas touch. Jordan, arguably the company's best asset, is planning to tour the Nike factories in Asia, arguably the company's worst liability. It was Jordan's idea, says Weinstein, the company spokesman. Jordan has grown tired of all the questions about factory wages and says he wants to see firsthand what the fuss is about.

Still, his tour is designed not so much to cheer up factory hands in Hanoi as to connect with a particular brand of swoosh consumers: females. The labor issue keeps coming up in focus groups with girls as young as 12, Nike executives told me. Phil Knight has seen the future of his industry and it does not have an Adam's apple. Twenty-five years ago, he says, only 1 in 30 school-age girls played sports; today it's 1 in 5. Nearly 40 percent of high-school athletes are girls. And so the Nike poster athlete of the new millennium is a female American soccer player, Mia Hamm. I ran this name by many of my sports-loving friends, all of them ESPN habitues, runners and soccer parents. We buy gear and channel-surf with the best of them. Our reaction was the same: Who? Then I asked my 11-year-old daughter about Mia Hamm, and she looked at me as if I were as dumb as a fence post. With Hamm, Nike has managed to go below adult radar, just as Tom Clarke alluded to on our run.

Hamm is 26 years old, from Chapel Hill, N.C., winner of an Olympic gold medal and a World Championship title. She is beautiful. She can use a verb. She has the right hint of attitude. And if enough people ever start watching women's soccer -- Nike is heavily promoting next year's Women's World Cup, to be staged in the United States -- she may be gold for the Beaverton sneaker company. ''Why shouldn't girls around the world say, 'I want to be like Mia?''' asks Katherine Melchior Ray, the head of Nike women's footwear. At Nike, that refrain can sound like a prayer. Hamm's sport also happens to be the world's most popular athletic pastime. In trying to build its market share in soccer, Nike signed the Brazilian national team for a reported $200 million and made a long-term deal with Ronaldo, the team's 21-year-old star. It was all supposed to come together this year at the World Cup in France, where Nike spent $40 million on advertising and promotions.

In France, Nike's lightweight, sticky-toed Mercurial shoes were worn by many a soccer player, including those on the United States national team (which Nike also sponsored, and which lost all three of its games). And the shoe has sold well, Nike says. But the swoosh took its share of World Cup hits. The newspaper Liberation accused Nike of promoting ''totalitarian esthetics'' with billboards around Paris of Aryan-looking youth marching forward for sport. The ads were pulled. ''They looked like fascists,'' says Vince Francom, the industry analyst. ''You had to wonder what Nike was thinking. In the championship game, watched by more people than any other sports event in history, Brazil was upstaged -- and soundly beaten -- by the French national team, which was sponsored by Adidas. The French were brash, aggressive, multi-ethnic, a snub to the establishment -- in short, a perfect Nike team. Phil Knight acknowledges as much, with a wince. Worse yet, Ronaldo suffered a seizure before the game and played listlessly, sparking worldwide speculation that Nike pressured the Brazil coach to keep the unfit superstar in the lineup -- a charge that Knight vehemently denies.

In the end, he says, Ronaldo and the Brazilians are bound to pay off for Nike. Ronaldo's nickname, after all, is O Dono do Mundo: the King of the World. One problem: The King still has some name-recognition problems in this country. ''Michael Jordan,'' admits Mark Parker, ''had never heard of him.'' Advertisement Continue reading the main story The wind is calm this afternoon on Lake Nike, the 10-acre body of water on the corporate campus. Knight is sitting inside the company boardroom, the table a massive oval of honey maple. There is not a swoosh in sight. After a year of playing defense, Knight has been on the offensive for months, preparing for next week's annual meeting. The low point, perhaps, came in April, when the Nike backlash hit very close to home. Outside the Portland Niketown, some 200 people hissed and booed a 20-foot likeness of Knight and urged his company to pay higher wages in Asia. Knight shrugs off most of the criticism, saying it comes with Nike's perch atop the sporting world. But he can still get very emotional about his company.

''I have just two words to say,'' he told employees earlier this year while announcing the layoff of 1,300 workers. ''I'm sorry.'' Every downward tick of the stock, every slashing parody in ''Doonesbury,'' Knight seems to take personally. And, financially, it does affect him personally; he owns nearly 96 million shares of Nike stock, 34 percent of the company. Married, with two grown children, he has lived in the same house for the past 25 years. But his holdings are worth more than $3 billion. In college, Knight ran a 4-minute-10-second mile, fast enough to make a team, the University of Oregon Ducks, that is to track and field what Notre Dame is to football, but too slow to win many races. His idea for a global company -- with shoes designed in the United States, manufactured in low-wage factories in Asia, then sold worldwide -- has been remarkably consistent. The early selling point was that Knight and Bill Bowerman, the Oregon coach and Nike co-founder, listened to athletes. Every ounce shaved off a running shoe was 200 fewer pounds lifted per mile, they used to say.

What has surprised Knight is how the big ride to the top happened so quickly, and now, how it has generated so much spite. ''Obviously, we want our trademark to be special,'' says Knight, mulling over the nagging question of what to do with the swoosh. ''But there is such a thing as letting it become too popular. We grew from $3 billion to $9 billion, and there was no forecast for that to happen.'' For his part, Knight seems alternately playful and morose about the company's future. When asked about retirement, he laughs. ''I want to die here,'' he says. ''Hopefully, not soon.'' In May, Knight went before the National Press Club in Washington to announce changes in Nike factory labor practices. He used the opportunity to bait reporters. ''I figured that I'd just come out and let you journalists have a look at the Great Satan up close and personal,'' he said. Advertisement Continue reading the main story During his speech, Knight unveiled plans to set a minimum age of 18 at all Nike footwear factories. The company has also shifted to water-based solvents to bond the shoes, instead of the harmful toluene.

Nike started a loan program for young entrepreneurs in Vietnam and Indonesia and promised to set up an independent monitoring system at its factories. Critics were somewhat mollified, but they are still calling on Nike to double wages. Anticipating a row at next week's annual meeting, Nike officials say the focus of their presentations will be on ''corporate responsibility.'' No talk of the Goatster, apparently. But even in bad times, the company has held to its swagger. ''I think as long as Phil is there, the anti-establishment part of Nike is not going to go away,'' says Neil Goldschmidt, the former Oregon governor and a one-time Nike vice president. Nor is the swoosh ever likely to disappear completely. Nike may ultimately abandon the swoosh, but the swoosh will never abandon Phil Knight -- it is tattooed on his left ankle. ConceptDrop | How Nike Re-defined the Power of Brand Image How Nike Re-defined the Power of Brand Image How Nike Re-defined the Power of Brand Image The Swoosh is easily one of the most recognized brand logos in the world. Nike, who has refined themselves as an athletic and fitness company and not just another shoe company, is just shy of becoming the definition of sports themselves.

The Nike Swoosh, one of the most recognizable logos in the world, has made Nike one of the most highly valued and most successful brands today. If any company can translate the importance of creating, protecting, and maintaining a brand for a company, Nike is the perfect example. Branding is one of the most crucial aspects that creates and defines a company’s identity. By building up a brand, a company is taking a series of steps to create value, brand visibility, and make their product desirable. A brand should encompass a lifestyle, give consumers something to identify with, and give the product substance and meaning. Take it from Nike, who’s success and dominance in the world of sports has thrived on their ability to construct their brand image, visibility, and giving the company logo extremely high value. Nike has created superior value by utilizing celebrity endorsers, such as Michael Jordan, to represent their brand. The idea is that the celebrity image is embedded into the consumer’s mind and will cause the consumer to associate the endorser with Nike’s products, making the brand more desirable and valuable. The sports celebrities convey the idea of athleticism and become this almost heroic, iconic symbol people strive to become.

When consumers translate these ideologies and Jordan’s iconic stance into the Swoosh, the Nike logo builds incredible value. Naomi Klein, author of No Logo, notes three ways Nikes has strived to become the very definition of sports itself, involving sports celebrities, destroying the competition, and selling pieces of the brand “as if it was the Berlin Wall.” Nike town, glossy, extravagant stores built in the United States, serve the purpose of making consumers think that Nike’s brand is high end and gives consumers a cool user experience. The Swoosh in Nike Town is worshipped as art and a heroic symbol – it defines athleticism, courage, honor, victory, teamwork and all other aspects correlated with sports. The Nike Swoosh has been made into this cultural dissemination that stands for athleticism, power, fitness, and all other aspects Nike attempts to incorporate into their brand image. Nike’s advertising has established the Swoosh as one of the most recognizable logos that symbolizes athletic excellence, a spirit of determination, hip authenticity and playful self-awareness. Nike spends around 3% of its annual revenues on capital expenditures, whereas spending on advertising and promotions – keeping their brand visible – is about 10% of annual revenues.

Still don’t believe brand is that important? In 1997, Nike spent $978 million on advertising, marketing and promotion. Nike pours millions into advertising and marketing spending, because keeping their brand visibility is the key in driving future earnings growth. When it comes to brand visibility, no one does it better than Nike. They have re-defined the power of a brand image and are one of the best represented, culturally understood, and symbolic companies in the United States and in the history of sports. Nike’s logo has encompassed a brand that reflects aspects that people strive for in their lives: dominance, authenticity, innovation, winning, and performance. Nike’s ability have their brand image encompass these ideologies allows consumers to identity with Nike not for the production of their product, but for the image that the brand embodies. About ConceptDrop: ConceptDrop helps organizations develop their brand through visual content.

For information about our professional design service, email design {at} conceptdrop.com Logo Design History - Famous Logos N Z Nestle Specialist pharmacist Heinrich Nestle was born in 1814 in Frankfurt and moved to Switzerland in 1843, where he proceeded to open his own pharmacy and sell a variety of products, including everything from drugs to fertilizer to mustard. Because the official language of Geneva was French, he changed his name to Henri Nestle. In 1867, Nestle sold milk products for mothers and then in 1904 began to manufacture and sell milk chocolate. The bird family that is used in the Logo dates back to the Nestle family coat of arms and symbolizes the meaning of the Nestle name "small nest". free logo download eps Nike Nike was founded by Phil Knight in the 60s, but at that time he called it "Blue Ribbon Sports". The name Nike and its trademark swoosh design were brought about later, in 1971. Drawing from Greek mythology, Knight named his company Nike, after the goddess of victory.

Thus, the Nike name provided the company with a strong association and image, especially appropriate for a sports gear company, which positions itself in the market as a leader of sport footwear and uses the greatest athletes and the record of their achievements in its advertising. The swoosh logo was originally developed by a graphic designer, Carolyn Davidson in 1971. She was one of 35 people who made suggestions as to what logo to use for the organization. The owners met and agreed on Davidson's design, taking into account her conceptual thinking about the wings of the Greek goddess Nike According to Davidson, Knight asked for a design that suggested movement- originally disliking the swoosh she submitted, but as Knight had deadlines to meet, he ended up using it saying "I don't love it, but it will grow on me". As the time passed, the Swoosh logo has become synonymous with the company. Together with Just Do It slogan, the Swoosh logo perfectly expresses the essence of the Nike brand and its philosophy. They show people the way to the determination, needed for reaching a desired mark in their sporting activities. It expresses well a high ambition and a will for victory, which the Nike Company made a part of its brand image and corporate culture.

free logo download eps Nivea This well known and highly regarded product emerged out of Germany in 1911. The name itself derived from the Latin terms "nivis" and "snow." Similarly, to maintain a look of freshness and cleanliness, the designers used the color blue. When the blue was introduced in 1925 this was also a socially acceptable color as it had no links to political parties. How much did Nike pay for the Swoosh logo? | Reference.com How much did Nike pay for the Swoosh logo? A: Quick Answer Carolyn Davidson was a student at Portland State University when Nike founder Phil Knight offered her $2 per hour to do graphic design work for his company. Davidson billed $35 for the Swoosh design project, which is a comparative bargain for such an iconic brand logo. At the time, Knight's fledgling company was not yet called Nike but instead Blue Ribbon Sports (BRS).

Knight eventually gave Davidson a more substantial form of remuneration: a diamond ring engraved with the Swoosh logo and an undisclosed amount of Nike stock after the company went public in the 1980s, a gesture that Davidson has described as generous given that her original invoice of $35 from 1971 was paid in full. Your Logo on Nike Apparel | Custom Nike Clothing and Golf Balls at 4imprint | Nike Kelly, with 4imprint 5 years. Employee Tip on Custom Nike Branded Products: Promote fitness and an active lifestyle with Nike branded polo shirts, caps, backpacks and golf balls! Your custom imprint is co-branded with the legendary Nike logo for desirable giveaways to promote health and wellness. Your gift recipients will appreciate the quality and appeal of these embroidered pullovers and sports duffel bags. Corporate

Question: What company's logo is described as a "swoosh"?
Answer: Nike