thought pieces

How the story allows you to push design

Storytelling isn't just about captivating an audience - it cuts to the heart of how you design products

Nike's Tinker Hatfield and Michael Jordan

Tinker Hatfield joined Nike in 1981, going on to use his architectural background to design shoes. Yet he had grown up wanting to run track and but-for a horrific injury he was certainly going places. With that dream being cut short, however, he tuned to architecture, and then he then went on to lead Nike's design.

Today, he finds himself inventing self-lacing shoes! Most famously, however, he designed the Air Jordans and oversaw Nike's "Innovation Kitchen". He is nothing short of a legend in design.

His genius was infusing style into design, and he always begun with a story when pitching his latest ideas. In fact, the story was reflected in his product: think of the Air Max 1 and the exposed cushion bubble: "it was built on taking a risk for a good reason which was to tell a story and to also make a good product". The bubble told the user what was behind the shoe, it exposed the back-story of the design.

The legendary Air Max 1

One of the most famous incidents outlining this genius, however, came during a talk with Michael Jordan over the design of the Air Jordan 3 shoes. The previous ones had been a failure, and Michael Jordan was even contemplating leaving Nike entirely.

"I knew Michael wasn't very happy with the Air Jordan 2," Hatfield said.

Michael was late and he "was not in a great mood," Hatfield said. "Phil Knight [co-founder of Nike] was in the room, and Michael came in after keeping him waiting for four hours."

Air Jordan 3

So how did Hatfield save a lucrative relationship which, thirty years later, would make the Air Jordans logo the defining symbol of one of the biggest brands in footwear, worth more than $3 billion in sales per year?

Hatfield said that “When I came in... I had stories to tell.”

tinker-hatfield-air-jordan-3-history-que

Hatfield's inspiration came from Jordan's personality

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Air Jordan V

Air Jordan XIII 'Black Cat'

Storytelling for Hatfield was a key way of understanding how to connect with the consumer. But more so than this, storytelling allowed him to design products that conveyed meaning and push designing conventions into new directions.

Hatfield ignored conventional wisdom that athletic shoes had to be functional. His background in architecture meant his mind always looked to infuse style into form (he wasn't constrained by the narrative frames dictating the attitudes of others at Nike).

Going back to our story, Hatfield listened when Michael Jordan spoke, and created a shoe that was based off of his vision. Jordan didn't want high-tops, and he also wanted a light shoe, but Hatfield went further: he used Michael's life journey as inspiration to design a shoe that that would reflect his personality.

This included the way he moved on the basketball pitch, and one of his most famous designs was inverted flames drawn on the back of the shoes (Air Jordan 5) to reflect Jordan's movements on the pitch that he believed mimicked an air-force pilot; or his predatory style which inspired the Air Jordan XIII ("the black cat").

"without the story and the meaning, you can look at performance as a driving force, but these shoes were more than that to me and I think for millions of people. Thy have meaning, and it might be different for different people. But this one, and all the other ones we have just talked have..there's a story for each one. It isn't just scribbling on a piece of paper and coming up with a design, there's a lot of effort that goes in to trying to make it meaningful".

The Air Jordan XX where his reincarnation. It was the 20th anniversary of the Air Jordan brand, and he came out of retirement for it. It was the first shoe where he really got to talking to Michael Jordan about his life, and as he began to speak about his life, Hatfield's genius was once again exposed.

"I started to realise that I could start designing a symbol that would represent each and everyone of those stories...and that became the heart of the shoe". Even Michael Jordan was impressed "for him to come up with that concept and then have the consumers connect. If I had to pick the best storytelling produce we've ever done, was probably the XX".

"I think if you just stay in your studio and try and dream up new ideas, there's not a good foundation for your ideas. Just get out there and experience life. That just gives you the library in your head to then translate that into unique, new design work".

This final point from Hatfield is worth bearing in mind for all industries. As we learned in the previous post, being stuck in your own world can stop you from innovating, and prevent you from seeing future trends that could impact your growth.

Air Jordan XX. Note, each symbol represents an aspect of Jordan's life