In 1971, Phil Knight was running Blue Ribbon Sports — a small Oregon-based company that imported Onitsuka Tiger running shoes from Japan and sold them to American distance runners. He needed to part ways with Onitsuka and launch his own brand, and he needed a mark for it. He also needed the mark fast and cheap.
Knight taught accounting part-time at Portland State University. One of his students, Carolyn Davidson, was a graphic design student elsewhere in the same institution. He asked her to design a mark, paying her $2 an hour.
Davidson presented several options in summer 1971. The running client wanted something that evoked motion but felt distinct from the three-stripe Adidas mark and the Onitsuka stripe. Davidson showed them a single-stroke mark that she later said “looked like a wing”. Knight’s recorded reaction: “I don’t love it, but maybe it’ll grow on me.”
The mark appeared on its first product — the Nike Cortez running shoe — at the 1972 Munich Olympics. The brand had been named Nike, after the Greek goddess of victory, by Blue Ribbon Sports employee Jeff Johnson shortly before launch. Davidson submitted her final invoice for $35 — roughly $260 in 2026 dollars.
In 1983, Knight invited Davidson to a company dinner and presented her with a gold Swoosh ring and 500 Nike shares, worth roughly $643,000 at the time. She still owns them. The Swoosh has since generated over $200 billion in annual licensing revenue across its usage history.
The mark has been refined twice. In 1985, the “nike” wordmark was redrawn in a stylised italic based on Futura, paired with the Swoosh in a tighter lockup. In 1995, Nike dropped the wordmark entirely — the Swoosh had reached a level of brand recognition that made the word redundant. That’s the form Nike still uses.
