How $35 Turned In To $billions

When it comes to iconic images in the corporate world, there are few more recognisable than Nike. So powerful and far reaching is the swoosh image, Nike don’t even have to include their company name on an advert for people to recognise the brand. Although it undoubtedly is one of the worlds most visible brand designs, it was actually put together for less than $35 by a university student no less.

In 1971, Carolyn Davidson attended Portland State University alongside Phil Knight who owned a company called Blue Ribbon Sports which would later go on to form Nike. Knight asked her if she would work on a new logo design for a brand new range of shoes and to charge him $2 a day for her work. When Davidson had finished the design, she presented it and handed in her invoice for $35. Despite agreeing to the design, Knight initially said he didnt love it, but thought it would grow on him.

Davidson later received a gift from Knight made up of a diamond ring which had a swoosh icon engraved in to it logo and an undisclosed amount of Nike stock. Considering the brand strength today, you would have to say the design stage proved possibly the best value for money of any corporate logo ever created. Despite receiving the gift, Davidson was said to be rather astonished considering her initial invoice was paid in full and that was the end of it as far as she was concerned.

Over time, Davidson handed off work on the logo to a dedicated team of logo designers, but she did take a keen interest in the logo even after leaving in 1983.

Davidson has always claimed that her inspiration came from the Greek goddess of victory, aso called Nike and the design features the wing of the statue. The goddess was previously the source of inspiration to many great Greek writers and according to Greek legend; a Greek would say “When we go in to battle and win, we say it is nike”.

When it was first released, the mark became known as the strip, but was later changed to the swoosh to represent the fibres used in all of Nikes running shoes.