It wasn't always a swoosh.
The design was first used on the Nike Cortez, one of its first running shoes. Knight famously paid Davidson a mere $35 for it, the equivalent of $257.54 in today's money. But then in 1983, in a bit of astute PR, Knight gave her a gold swoosh ring embedded with a diamond and an envelope containing Nike stock.
Knight reportedly told Davidson that the logo reminded him of the wing of the goddess Nike in Greek mythology, which was the inspiration for the company's name. These days, though, Nike is less about promoting fierce competition than fun and inclusiveness. Thankfully, the logo also works as a general symbol of positivity, so it functions just as well in the 21st century as it did in the 20th.
As such, the Swoosh has remained largely unchanged since its creation, but has been used in a variety of different forms over the years, which we detail below.Nike as a company began life in 1964 as Blue Ribbon Sports. Headquartered in Beaverton, Oregon, the sportswear firm was founded by Bill Bowerman, a track-and-field coach at the University of Oregon, and his former student Phil Knight. The logo was a set of interlacing letters with the full name of the company underneath.
As we mentioned above, Carolyn Davidson designed the Nike 'Swoosh' back in 1971. Of course, back then no one would have recognised the brand from the symbol alone, so 'Nike' was also written over the top in lower-case script.In 1978, the Swoosh switched from a line drawing to a solid, black checkmark and the Nike wordmark went from a cursive script to italic, all-caps in Futura Bold.
A further advantage of a symbol-only logo is that it's instantly recognisable around the world, regardless of language. That's of obvious benefit to Nike, which likes to think of itself as a brand without borders. Furthermore, a symbol helps to form a psychological connection to the brand, as people's brains responds on a deeper, more instinctive level to images than text.
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