I was on the bus a while ago, eavesdropping on four guys that were decked out head-to-toe in Nike gear (including socks and flip flops). While color and style differed (and they each wore different baseball hats), the swooshes did not. One guy even had a swoosh on his knee.
While I am not anti-Nike and genuinely love the quality of their products, I am anti-branding myself. I tend to not buy clothing that has an obvious over-branded mark/label/color to it. The idea of me paying others to advertise for them bothers me. Additionally, when I see it in excess on others, I wonder how it doesn't bother them. With that said, I would love to work on graphics for a Nike shoe or hoodie, however, I can rationalize this borderline hypocracy as one relating to personal identity and the other to professional identity. Tricky.
Tribes have been an interesting subject for me lately. Who we associate with, what we look like, where we go and how we behave/think automatically pulls us toward one tribe or another whether we like it or not. The Nike-guy-tribe that I encountered was so over-swooshed that I had to illustrate it somehow. So, with no offense to Nike, I made the guys into Matryoshka dolls, gave them swooshes for their eyes/mouthes and accented their outfits with swooshes as their tribal markings.
Labels: ILLUSTRATION
