CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 1/9/2025

When innovation is fundamental and archives run deep

“Necessity is always the mother of invention. Pure research may stumble upon something that is useful, but I think most innovations have been related to a need.” So said legendary track and field coach, trainer of Olympians, and Nike co-founder Bill Bowerman—known across the globe for having invented the brand’s iconic first major running shoe in 1972, in his home kitchen, by use of his wife’s waffle iron. This, of course, is only the tip of the iceberg, in terms of Nike innovation. The rest of the company’s design history is now told, for the first time with full access to the Department of Nike Archives (DNA)—the company’s own internal archive of more than 200,000 prototypes, documents, products and items of ephemera—via a brilliantly curated exhibition at the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, Germany. Pictured here: the classic Nike Internationalist running shoe in an experimental suspension apparatus, ca. 1981. It is reproduced from Vitra’s impeccably designed and printed exhibition catalog, Nike: Form Follows Motion.