Only rarely would any sane man pay over $200 for a pair of shoes that were not imported from Italy and made from ancient leather. But what would you say if I told you that some people do this every week and blow an entire paycheck on gym shoes alone? You would say those people are obsessed with playing basketball, but then I’d tell you that they were just buying Air Jordans and you’d come to your senses and go out and buy the next new pair valued over $300.

For nearly 25 years now, Michael Jordan has had his name imprinted on these shoes. Beginning in 1984 in Jordan’s first year out of college, Nike knew they had struck quite the deal when they signed MJ to endorse their new pair of basketball sneakers. Little did they know that they had just signed a deal with the greatest player in basketball history and that their shoes would be breaking the bank for decades to come.

It is 2010 now and the 25th anniversary pair of Air Jordan’s are due to come out within the next week. But first, let us see where it all began.

Air Jordan 1

First released in March of 1985. When Jordan brought these out for the first time they were banned by the NBA. Apparently the red and black were not a part of the color scheme of NBA regulation sneakers, but little did the management know that they would soon be worshiping the player wearing them as somebody finally made the NBA something worth watching and talking about.

Air Jordan 2

Not exactly the most eye-popping of the Jordan brand, but he averaged 37 points per game and won his first dunk contest in these bad boys. Buying these shoes will not allow you to jump higher than usual, but you’ll certainly feel a spring in your step (it might come from being 2 bills lighter, but none the less.)
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So this past weekend I was watching Sports Nation on ESPN and they had an awesome tournament of the best in-game posterized dunks. Of course Vince Carters dunk in the Olympics was held out of the competition because it wouldn’t be fair. The hosts rocked Vince Carter Olympic number 9 jerseys and played his dunk about 700 times through the show which you can see here if you never saw it. Anyway throughout the show they did other little stories and one was back board breaking. They showed Shaq’s rim breakers, then the king Darryl Dawkins dunks. Then they showed something I never seen before and I don’t know how the hell I’ve never heard or seen anything about it, being a huge NBA fan. It was from a Nike exhibition game in Italy in 1986. Jordan completely explodes and demolishes the rim while posterizing some poor Italian in the process, raining glass over the opposing team. I guess the reason noone ever saw it was because the game was never televised and this is footage captured by a bystander. Either way enjoy Jordan bringing the thunder, accompanied with an awesome 1980′s trumpet tooting tune.

The other day I did a post on some cool and interesting logos, and how they changed throughout history. While I was writing that up, I started to wonder who came up with some of these ideas, and how well were they compensated for their efforts. I would like to think that the person who came up with the Apple logo is busy doing triple front flips into their huge pool of gold coins like Scrooge McDuck. Or maybe that person is actually picking trash out of a gutter trying to scrap together enough cigarette butts to have a solid smoke. As Ive found out by being in the corporate world for a short time, just because you come up with a good idea that the boss likes, it doesn’t mean that your now his new best friend and on the fast track to retirement. Its your job. If you are a full time designer, your prime objective is to make things that your boss, and more importantly, your clients, like. If you didn’t do this, you would be sitting at home watching re runs of The Price is Right, because the amount of designers looking for work is astronomical. These logos have lasted a lifetime, but the people who created them have nothing to show for them except that weeks pay check stub.

NIKE

When Nike owner Philip Hampson Knight decided to take on the world of athletics and form Nike, he knew that one thing that was most important was the logo. He had a strong sense that the image you project as a brand was as important as your product. He commissioned a local college student to come up with the logo for his newly formed company. The price tag? A whopping 43 dollars. The designer only charged him enough money so she could buy a dress to her Senior class dance. In the end, Mr.Knight is worth about 9.8 billion dollars, and every person on earth knows the Nike check, and the phrase Just Do It. The designer probably wore her new 43 dollar dress for about an hour until she decided that having drunken sex with a frat boy was the best way to top off her college career.

The Smiley Face

Harvey Ball designed the first Smiley face, while working at State Mutual Life Assurance Company as a freelance artist. This is where doing a good job for your boss comes in. Everyone loved the idea, but Harvey never put a copyright on the design. The graphic was popularized in the early 1970s by Bernard and Murray Spain, who seized upon it in a campaign to sell novelty items. The two produced buttons as well as coffee mugs, t-shirts, bumper stickers and many other items emblazoned with the symbol and the phrase “Have a happy day”. Ever since, this logo has been licensed out in over 100 countries and is arguably one of the most popular logo/designs of the past 50 years. That has to be tough to swallow.

I Love New York

I dont really think I need to explain what this is. Everyone in the world knows it, and its been ripped off a million times over. The I Love New York logo is a rebus created by Milton Glaser consisting of the capital letter I, with a heart, and then NY. Its simple, nice, and ohh yeah, it was free! In 1977, William S. Doyle, Deputy Commissioner of the New York State Department of Commerce hired advertising agency Wells Rich Greene to develop a marketing campaign for New York State. Doyle also contacted Glaser, a free lance graphic designer to work on the project. Glaser expected the campaign to last only a couple months and did the work pro bono. That means FOR FREE. Since then, the logo has spawned many different versions, and is known world wide. This one actually has a happy ending though. When Brooklyn Brewery was looking for a logo, they went to Milton Glaser. As an established artist at this point, he did not feel right charging a start up brewery an extreme amount of money for his services. Instead, he made a deal that he would do the logo for a life time supply of Brooklyn beer. Each month, cases upon cases are dropped off at Glasers studio in Manhattan. Sounds just about right to me.

Lance Armstrong and Nike unite to launch STAGES, a global art show to raise funds and awareness for the fight against cancer. The project is a global art exhibition inspired by Lance Armstrong has been making it’s stops around the world and is now finally landing in New York. Engaging the creative community in the fight against cancer, “STAGES” exhibits over twenty original works of art in response to the devastating disease with a distinct focus on the subject of survivorship. The show features some of the world’s most accomplished and promising international artists, including Shepard Fairey, Ed Ruscha, Cai-Guo Qiang, Richard Prince, Catherine Opie, KAWS, Eric White, José Parlá, Christopher Wool, Tom Sachs, Dzine, and Rosson Crow. Also, work from New York artists like graffiti legend FUTURA have been added to the collection. The exhibition will be open to the public October 31 through November 21.








Nike continues to be a long time supporter of both Lance Armstrong and the Lance Armstrong Foundation, creating the yellow wristband in 2004, which gave global visibility to the foundation. To date there are over 70 million bands that have been worn by supporters throughout the world. The exhibition has already raised millions of dollars to fight cancer and continues to receive support from the world. This past Sunday there was a special “It’s About the Bike” auction that took place hosted by Livestrong. On the block were seven custom Trek road bikes ridden by Lance Armstrong in 2009, including six “Art Bikes” specially designed for Lance by Damien Hirst, Kenny Scharf, KAWS, Yoshitomo Nara, Marc Newson and Shepard Fairey. Close to $1.3 Million was raised for LIVESTRONG in the auction, with all of the artist bikes selling for five and six-figure sums to eager collectors.

Gabriel Dishaw is an artist who does this thing using the Junk that we all throw out. He has done many other sculptures, but we are focusing on a few pairs of metal kicks he created. He labels this first one, the appropiately named, Junk Dunk.

He used very little wire , and more glue to keep it as non-bulky as possible and included new details such as a hinged tongue and a nike logo on the tongue and the back of the shoe. Previously he used actual Nike soles, but this time, it was all trash. We love them , but do not recommend anyone wear these because you will lose your toes, or get some kind of tetanus disease. Either way , they are quite impressive.

I recently got back to the East Coast from L.A., and let me tell you, the underground shoe world out West is like nothing I have ever seen. There are many stores that specialize in selling rare and expensive shoes, such as Flight Club, and Riff, both on Fairfax. While I was busy trying to process the amount of sneakers, and their price tags, my good friend Simon pointed out one of the most desired  shoes for collectors. The Wu Tang Clan Nike Dunk High, originally released in 1999, is perhaps one of the rarest and highest valued Dunks of all time. The Dunk was created by Nike as a promo piece only for members, friends and family of the Wu Tang Clan, and the shoe was limited to under 72 pairs (36 Chambers X 2). 10 years later, this color way of the Dunk High still commands over $5000, and I’ve seen them online for nearly $7000. While the colors are simply yellow and black, the Wu-Tang logo is embroidered into the heel and the tongue tag so that everyone will know these are legit Wu. Not that anyone would ever see them anyway, for over $5000 these puppies would sit in my closet, in a air tight chamber, until my first born was ready for college. At that point I would be able to sell these things for a Ivy League tuition with a few bucks to spare.

To celebrate the release of Paul Rodriguez’s third shoe, Nike SB has produced a new commercial titled “Today Was a Good Day.” This is the newly released extended version which features Eric Koston, Kobe Bryant, Ice Cube, Lance Mountain and Theotis Beasley. It starts off the same way as Cubes original “Today Was a Good Day” video, and follows P-Rod and his friends though L.A. If Nike keeps putting in this kind of effort with each release of a new P-Rod skate shoe then I will be happy. Enjoy!