NIKE
summer 2008


Celebration of the Athletic Summit in Beijing


For Athletes and Non-Athletes

The Nike Air Rejuven8 will be worn by US athletes as part of their medal stand outfits. Since April 2008 the shoe is on the market. It looks so good, that it fits even to the feet of non-athletes!

fig.: Olympic Village "Lucky Green"

Homage to number 8 in Chinese tradition

To commemorate 080808, Nike presents this special Air Rejuven8 with incorporated colorful octagons into the shoe’s futuristic design. Nike Sportswear created a special octagon graphic to celebrate the athletic summit in Beijing, a visual representation of myriad cultures coming together in the name of sports, as well as an homage to the importance of the number eight in Chinese tradition.

fig.: Black/Black/Octagon Bootie

The Design Development begins with a protective fruit net at Thanksgiving

At a Thanksgiving dinner in 1999, a Nike innovation leader’s seven-year-old son took the protective fruit net off an Asian pear and placed it around his bare foot. It was a playful gesture that immediately sparked the imagination of Nike’s design team, spawning the first Air Rejuven8 prototype - built from the very same netting and hot-glued to a last.

fig.: Sketches

How to manufacture innovative design?

What intrigued designers about the structure was the way the material worked in harmony with the foot’s shape, as well as its graphic look. But, at the time, the technology required to make the Air Rejuven8 was too complex for conventional shoe manufacturing. Its various prototypes ended up at the bottom of a drawer for nearly five years, out of sight, but not out of mind.

fig.: Netting

"The Innovation Kitchen" is ground zero for the invention and ingenuity of Nike technology. It is a space where designers, engineers and developers work on unconventional projects without the constriction of time, enabling them to consider and explore - in great detail - creative solutions to problems.

Innovation Designer Pam Greene

In 2003, Nike innovation designer Pam Greene was studying the comfort aspects of a shoe: important foundation work for delivering recovery benefits to the feet of weary athletes. Greene immediately saw potential in the netting design, working out a tangible plan for the shoe’s construction. After six months researching materials and geometries for the net structure, Pam, a specialist in designing comfort footwear, crafted the shoe into a prototype phase that showed a unique ability to assist recovery and enable restorative running. After an additional year of testing and refinement by the Kitchen team, the Air Rejuven8 concept was ready to see the light of day.

fig.: Early Prototype

"The great thing about innovating at Nike is that we have iconic heritage products to draw from,” says Pam Greene, who created the Air Rejuven8 after spending several years working on comfort concepts for Nike.

With the help from the Innovation Kitchen team, and drawing from the experience of designers like Bob Mervar, who designed the Presto; Tinker Hatfield, creator of the Air Huarache; Sean McDowell, who brought the Air Kukini to the triathlon world; and Bruce Kilgore who invented the Sock Racer; Pam built upon revolutionary foundation concepts and pushed them to the next level of rejuvenating comfort and aesthetic functionality.

fig.: Family Tree - Zvedochka

The Zvezdockha, Nike’s innovation project with designer Marc Newson, introduced the idea of modularity to the Nike family, and the Air Rejuven8 makes it accessible from a consumer and athletic standpoint. The Air Rejuven8 is the latest evolution and fusion of the above mentioned shoes in Nike’s genealogy.
Check out www.nike.com.



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