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Symbols
The Nike Swoosh represents motion and energy. The now-iconic swoosh shape is meant to evoke a whoosh of air, perhaps one a runner leaves in their wake. It was modeled after the wings of the Greek goddess Nike. The Nike logo is designed by Carolyn Davidson, a graphic design student Knight meets at Portland State. Early on, Knight does not like the Nike Logo. He finds it too abstract and doesn’t think it fits with his vision of the company. However, as Nike expands into a worldwide brand, so too does its iconography, especially the Nike Logo. Eventually, the logo becomes a stand-in for the globalized brand and remains the symbol that the public associates with Nike.
The Nike Swoosh Quotes in Shoe Dog
The Shoe Dog quotes below all refer to the symbol of The Nike Swoosh. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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9. 1969
Quotes
Days went swooshing by. I was trying to build a company and a marriage. Penny and I were learning to live together, learning to meld our personalities and idiosyncrasies, though we agreed that she was the one with all the personality and I was the idiosyncratic one. Therefore it was she who had more to learn.
For instance, she was learning that I spent a fair portion of each day lost in my own thoughts, tumbling down mental wormholes, trying to solve some problem or construct some plan. I often didn’t hear what she said, and if I did hear I didn’t remember it minutes later.
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The Nike Swoosh Symbol Timeline in Shoe Dog
The timeline below shows where the symbol The Nike Swoosh appears in Shoe Dog. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
11. 1971
...named Carolyn Davidson, whom he met at Portland State. He asks Carolyn to create a logo for his new company. In particular, he wants “Something that evokes a sense of motion.”...
(full context)
...the name and thinks about his time in Greece. With a new company name and logo, things start looking up for Knight. Nissho Iwai, a Japanese trading company, helps Knight fix...
(full context)
