From its classic swoosh logo, to its signature Air Jordan silhouette, to its legendary “Just Do It” tagline, to its recent 50th anniversary video short by Spike Lee, Nike knows how to expertly engineer and craft its brand down to the tiniest detail, and how to subtly zoom out and in to the zeitgeist.
Yet, when it comes to books, the Beaverton, Oregon–based behemoth has never put out a true cult classic—until now. No Finish Line (Actual Source), the brainchild of Nike’s chief design officer, John Hoke (the guest on Ep. 61 of our Time Sensitive podcast), extends out of Nike’s 50th anniversary celebrations last year and puts forward a sort of Nike design manifesto for the next five decades. Featuring an introductory essay by Hoke; a series of provocative and projective texts by the writer, editor, and former Herman Miller global brand director Sam Grawe; and far-future speculative fiction by Geoff Manaugh (the guest, along with his wife and partner, Nicola Twilley, on Ep. 33 of our At a Distance podcast), this slim, red-covered paperback—an “anti–coffee table book,” Hoke calls it—is all at once evocative, generous, ambitious, literary (but unstuffy), and punk. Substantive yet easily read in a single sitting, it is an invitation to ponder time: the ancient past, the present, and the distant future—all through the lens of humanity. And, of course, of Nike.
Designed by the London firm Zak Group, the volume has a vintage vibe, in the vein of a Penguin Classic, that looks even better with a crease down its spine. (Something about its retro feel led me to think of Ridley Scott’s iconic “1984” Apple ad for the original Macintosh computer.) This is a book to throw in your bag, to take on the subway, to shove in your back pocket, to leave at the gym. Says Hoke: “We want it dogeared, we want it annotated, we want it passed on.” Unlike Nike: Better is Temporary, a recently published Phaidon title (also by Grawe) that charts Nike’s phenomenal products and path to the present, No Finish Line presents a giant, moonshot leap into the future. Also addressing certain pressing, climate-related realities, it offers a realistic yet hopeful outlook.
Here, Hoke discusses the strikingly, refreshingly avant-garde project.
Reading the book, I noticed two words in particular pop up several times: “relentless” and “harness.” I was wondering what these words mean to you. How do they describe the past, present, and future of Nike?
That’s a great observation. To begin with, I think about “relentless” as a mindset of Nike that has always existed, which is this notion that we are about the progress of sports and the progression of athletes within the landscape of sports. It takes a relentless mindset to continuously and repetitively push hard against the status quo, and the boundaries that have always existed. We have always been a company that relentlessly leans into those thoughtful constraints and says, “No, we’re gonna push against that.” I think “harnessing” is taking that relentless activity that we do at Nike, and giving it to athletes, and then seeing what unfolds.
I also appreciate how you write about the iconic Nike orange shoebox as a “portal.” I was hoping you might elaborate on that a little bit.
The idea was that the box itself is far more than just the vessel. It’s a representation. When you receive a box at Nike, and you open the lid, and you look down on these products, you’re actually looking down at fifty years. That progression of thinking is delivered in this particular box, at this particular moment, knowing that it has a connection—a lineage—back to the beginning, and it also has a projection going forward.
If I was really truthful, Spencer, what I would tell you is that it was my Don Draper moment. Did you ever watch Mad Men? [Laughs] Remember when he’s like, “This device isn’t a spaceship, it’s a time machine”? To me, it’s not a box, it’s a portal.
I’m obsessed with the notion of a portal in general. Design, at its best, is often a portal. In 2020, I published a book about memorials [In Memory Of: Designing Contemporary Memorials], and all the memorials I chose to include in it I viewed as portals. It’s interesting to hear you talk about a box in that way. It’s almost like a tribute to the past, but also a portal to the future.
As much of the nostalgia that we were talking about at Nike last year, meeting our fifty-year mark, it was as much about looking forward—as much about aiming a telescope, and then, using that metaphor, “Hey, we’re never done.” There’s a design lineage between the timeless, the timely, and the future. That became crystallized in my mind of what to do—both celebrating, looking backward, but also unleashing the future. We’re at this unique moment in time, and I was lucky enough to have been here for thirty years when Nike turned fifty last year.
We get to do both things. We get to stop and celebrate, but also, we’re back at it. We’re going into our fifty-first year. That portal is, I hope, ever-expanding.
The book also references the ancient past. Toward the beginning, there’s this image of a Paleolithic hand ax. I was wondering, how do you think about that object within the context of Nike?
Part of the human experience is that we’re one of the few mammals that’s lucky enough to be wired to understand the power of a tool—and what a tool can do in terms of advancement and progression, whether that’s an ax or an arrowhead. It’s that uniquely human act of understanding your constraint and understanding your context, and saying, “We can do better. We can make the ax sharper, we can make it lighter, we can make it—”
A better grip.
Exactly. This may seem a bit of science fiction, but it’s also deeply rooted in our humanity. Which is: We are wired for progress. We understand tools. We’re reaching this age where the tools are amazing. It’s incredible what’s coming. So how do we leverage what those tools are and stay really grounded in our humanity?
The last thing I’ll say about that, because I love that you picked up on that: That tool is specifically a physical tool. It’s in your hand. You’re chopping, or you’re creating activity. And these are tools that we’re creating [at Nike] that go on peoples’ bodies, to stay wired to their biology, to stay innately human, and yet push that possibility and that potential farther and broader than we’ve ever thought possible.
There’s this line in the book: “The key driver of design at Nike has always been data.” Which is something you talked about on your Time Sensitive episode last year. I feel like so much about designing at Nike, from what I understand, is about how you use these new, cutting-edge tools—algorithmic design, parametric modeling, machine learning, DALL-E 2, whatever. What are some of the more breakthrough examples at the moment that you can cite, that are exciting you, that the team is thinking about and interacting with and exploring?
As designers, we have to realize that data does not dream. We do. Source material is exponentially going to be a part of the future. It’s knowing how to curate that information, and being able to have an intuition beyond the empirical data, and start to extrapolate the things that we see—that a human might see—that perhaps an A.I. might not see. I find that to be, basically, the grounds of the future of what design is. The value chain between an idea and output is shrinking rapidly with the greater use of things like DALL-E 2 and other A.I.
In the book, A.I. is described as a tool to dream with.
I’ve said before, “The good news is that the future is always unwritten, and the better news is that it’s never unimagined.” DALL-E 2 is a human’s imagination on rocket fuel, basically, and my imagination never sleeps, so to have to have a partner and a co-conspirator that’s sitting right there, that I know won’t do anything until I prompt it or I intend to use it, and to see what it’s coming back with—and the breadth and pace of this—I’m still grappling with it, to be honest with you.
But I’ve also had a chance to see where it’s going. What happens is, designers become more about curating and adjusting parameters, and still editing and beautifying. I’m incredibly excited. It’s such an advancement for our company, because it takes the data and puts it in its rightful place, and then empowers designers to make the choices that designers make, but far faster and with much more fidelity.
Another interesting angle of the book is that it’s also asking in a genuine way, How do we acknowledge and address the climate crisis? Obviously, it cites the Space Hippie as one example in this area. But there’s also Nike’s commitment to net zero emissions; there’s Nike’s thirty percent drawdown by 2030 of greenhouse gas emissions. Fifty years from now, whether it’s through recycling, upcycling, biomaterials, mushroom leather, whatever, where do you see the bulk of Nike’s materials coming from?
Just speaking off the cuff and really speculatively, I would presume that virgin material would be something that is never used. That we would have unlocked the ability to reimagine matter, over and over again. Nike would be a leader in the economic ecology of constant reimagination of matter. I’ve said it before: “Making matter matter more because it’s reimagined all the time.” That lets us serve citizen athletes and citizen consumers as citizen designers.
This is maybe a poetic way of thinking about it: Everything that we do as designers is to be reclaimed and reimagined. There would be very, very few “heirloom”-type pieces that would stay with people for emotional connections and reasons. You would be engaging in a service economy and exchanging materials back and forth. We, as humans, would begin to replicate some of the power of nature.
My hope would be that, if we’re here in fifty years, we would have cracked that code, and we would have taken a leadership position that we were proud of. That there was no compromise. That there was a full-throated agreement that we need to change what we’re doing. And that change can be super productive: to continue sports, to make the planet more livable, and to drive the expressions of design in ways that I couldn’t describe right now.
This book largely gets away from corporate-speak and leans into: How do you talk about a major, global company such as Nike in a way that’s actually intimate and human and not ignoring the extreme realities facing our planet right now and in the future? Very often climate issues get brushed under the rug by major corporations, but here they’re explored in a way that’s projective, forward-looking—
And hopefully, if I can add to your thought with optimism, [they’re explored] in a way that also shows that Nike was not powerless in this fait accompli. That we were action-oriented, and we called [the climate crisis] what it was, and we decided to make further investments as a company, both in innovation and design, to meaningfully make change.
We started this book project years ago, and I think one of the coolest things we decided was that, while many companies would put out this giant, glossy coffee table book that was meant to be viewed, we said, “No, this is an anti–coffee table book. This book is meant to be read and reread, and consumed as an optimistic speculation on the future.” Because we still want to sit and go, “That was cool, but the future is unwritten. And we’re gonna go figure it out.”
I love that you bring up this almost-literary factor to it, because one of the things that stood out to me as I was finishing it was the reference to Jun’ichirō Tanizaki’s 1933 essay In Praise of Shadows. Of course, that has become such a cult text. I can imagine No Finish Line will one day become its own sort of cult text, too.
A part of it is also my own fascination with the role of science fiction. At its best, it becomes a predictive course of, “Oh, this, this can happen!” It also puts several questions in front of you—questions of utility and beauty, and the role of society in the future, and now more than ever the role of technology. What the book is striving to anchor back on is that, wherever we go, [Nike is] going to be this biological piece that is going to be there.
In Praise of Shadows is ninety years old this year, so it’s fun to imagine No Finish Line ninety years from now. There are so many timeless lessons in In Praise of Shadows—and obviously, certain things in it that haven’t aged so well—but I think it’s interesting when you think about how a text endures, and how certain ideas remain core and essential.
It becomes referential. When you read it, it’s there with you. Whether it’s in the conscious or the subconscious, it’s there. It becomes a part of the journey.
That and many other books and films have always been references to me, whether that’s Metropolis or Blade Runner or Star Wars. They’re in our collective subconscious. They become central to the narrative of where the future is going to be. That, to me, is an exciting part of the book as well: the acceptance of the unknowing, where this all goes, because who could predict a pandemic three, four, five years ago? And who’s going to be able to predict the disruptions that will inevitably be in front of us? I hope that this is a treatise about resilience and humanity. The relentlessness and the uptake of that—the harnessing of that—is super important. For our company, anyway.
This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
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Kate Berry’s glowing personality transmits what she seems to desire most: a breath of fresh air, and time to care for her myriad plants; raise her 9-year-old daughter, Quinn; or host intimate dinner parties for friends on the garden-covered terrace of her Domino and of the food, wine, and travel magazine Saveur, Berry has interactions with media that, due to her demanding schedule, tend to be brief and light—and meaningful. She lives her work, which leaves plenty of time for creating media, but not so much for taking it in. As she puts it, “You don’t
Consider the flower. What image blossoms to mind? What emotion does it elicit? For centuries, flowers have persisted as Flora Photographica: The Flower in Contemporary Photography (Thames & Hudson), out August 30, editors William Ewing and Danaé Panchaud compose a selection of vibrant modern floral
Lush fruit trees bursting over a roof. A canopy of plants covering a facade. Intricate bamboo constructions spiraling frVõ Trọng Nghĩa: Building Nature (Thames & Hudson), readers get an inside look into how the celebrated architect has embraced two core themes throughout
As the director of archives and brand heritage at the Michigan-based furniture powerhouse Herman Miller—now known as MilIni Archibong.
The climate writer and essayist David Wallace-Wells has a knack for translating the unimaginable into the painfully realarticle for New York magazine and subsequent book of the same name, The Uninhabitable Earth, played a critical role in jolting the conversation, detailing the varied plagues and, finally, apocalyptic conditions The New York Times, who added him to their Opinion section, where he has begun a weekly newsletter to reflect on the latest in our Anthropocene Age.
“A forest in Norway is growing.” So begins the cryptic text printed on a certificate for the Future Library, or Framtidsbiblioteket, an artwork by Scottish artist Katie Paterson that, over the span of a century, cumulatively builds a collection of wri
At New York’s Lisson Gallery, an unfettered approach to sculpture is the driving force behind a new group exhibition. OnThe Odds Are Good, The Goods Are Odd” presents the work of 11 groundbreaking New York City–based contemporary artists. In the exhibition, sculptures are a m
Earlier this year, Burkina Faso–born Diébédo Francis Kéré became the first African, and the first Black architect, ever
Rising from a patch of spiny ornamental grass on New York’s High Line park, a 9-foot-tall tornado spins in place, whirliWindy”, a new (and first-ever) sculpture by the Moroccan-born, New York–based artist Meriem Bennani, installed near West 23rd2 Lizards” (2020), made with filmmaker Orian Barki and launched on Instagram at the start of the pandemic, depicted the bewilderi
“We think we invent things and create things and define ourselves by ourselves, but that’s not the whole story,” BaratunAmerica Outdoors, a six-part travel series that premiered last week on PBS. Thurston—a writer, comedian, and podcaster who has advised tThe Daily Show, and authored the best-selling memoir How To Be Black—has a knack for navigating nuanced conversations around race, culture, politics, and technology, framing these discussi
The jagged spine of the Rocky Mountains is too beautiful to mar. Yet over the years, developers and builders have manageBuckminster Fuller, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Eliot Noyes, and Eero Saarinen completed commissions in the Western United States, transforming it into a hub for architectural modRocky Mountain Modern: Contemporary Alpine Homes (Monacelli Press).
A recurring theme in design critic Alexandra Lange’s work is unpacking how—and for whom—objects and spaces are designed.The Dot-Com City, and surveyed how kids’ toys and physical environments impact their development in her 2018 book, The Design of Childhood. The ways in which outdoor public spaces, with their basketball courts, playgrounds, and skate parks, fail teen girls wa story she wrote for Bloomberg CityLab—one of many publications she has contributed to over the past two-plus decades.
Time standards are one of the many seemingly invisible societal constructs we interact with every day but seldom ponder.Mountain / Time,” the show is a nod to both the local time zone in Aspen, Mountain Standard Time (MST)—which the writer and critic Kylehas hailed for its “apartness” and “sense of detachment from the economic and cultural centers of the nation”—and the conceptual d
Detroit is a city of craft. Of carmakers and Carhartt. Of Motown Records and Eminem. Of iconic midcentury design (Isamu Noguchi’s Hart Plaza and Dodge Fountain, buildings by Mies van der Rohe and Minoru Heidelberg Project. So it’s fitting that, following previous iterations in Copenhagen, last fall, and in Turin, Italy, last month, the Freits latest “Hermès in the Making” exhibition (through June 15). A playful, Willy Wonka factory–like presentation of the company’s know-how, the display offers “an o not to smile while walking through it. Divided into four sections—”A Culture of Traditional Craftsmanship,” “High-Quality Msecret!” Beyond, stations feature artisans in saddle-stitching, porcelain painting, gemstone setting, glove-making, leather wor
Emerging from the pandemic, the design industry, like most of us, has changed. The past two and a half years, which havean increasingly pressing climate crisis, have formed a solemn backdrop. In March 2020, almost at once, in the locked-down lives of many, the notion of “home” a
The concept of the Golden Age was first introduced by the ancient Greek philosopher Hesiod, around 700 B.C., in a refereDesign Miami Basel (June 14–19), taking place at the Swiss city’s Messeplatz. Organized around the theme “The Golden Age: Rooted in the Pa
In her new book, Generation Dread, author and researcher Britt Wray delves into the psychological consequences of the climate crisis. Combining scientifi
May’s colors, textures, and sense of renewal seem to be essential ingredients in Paris-based artist Alexandre Benjamin Navet’s exuberant work. A self-described “spring and summer boy,” his expressive drawings—often made in watercolor or oil pas
How do the generation of Black Americans who grew up in the past 25 years reckon with the tragedies that play out in theThe Trayvon Generation (Grand Central Publishing), poet, educator, and scholar Elizabeth Alexander—who currently serves as the president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the largest humanities philanthropy in the UnEp. 52 of our Time Sensitive podcast)—explores these questions, and others, by meditating on race, class, trauma, justice, and memory, and their influences
In 1938, two years after completing one of his first realized public artworks, “History Mexico,” a sculptural, colored chis namesake museum in Long Island City, Queens, which he founded in 1985).
In the early 1860s, an advertisement in The New York Times offered $10,000 to anyone who could invent a new material for billiard balls. At the time, elephant ivory was the matercamphor, a waxy substance found in the wood of the camphor laurel tree. Though celluloid would later prove to be less than idea
Think about the last time you felt a sense of awe about the world. Perhaps you were hiking among trees in a lush forest,
Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs (one-of-a-kind digital assets created using blockchain technology), have divided the art woEp. 59 of our Time Sensitive podcast), see them as pathways to a promising future, while others express concern around the sky-high price points and carbon emissions they generate.
A sobering 2006 report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization laid out the striking impacts industrial animal agriculture has
At 35, Maggie Doyne is the mother of more than 50 children. One is her biological child, who lives with Doyne, her husbaBetween the Mountain and the Sky: A Mother’s Story of Hope and Love (Harper Horizon), out last month. Through telling her extraordinary story, she demonstrates the life-altering power of
For most of the 20th century, breaking a sweat was seen as unladylike. Popular opinion considered working out dangerous
One afternoon in February of 1966, Stewart Brand took half a tab of LSD, sat on a rooftop in San Francisco’s North Beach
Eating ramen is a multisensory experience: the fragrant steam coming off of the broth, the slurping sound of enjoying thThe Art of the Ramen Bowl” (March 18–July 5) that’s on view at the Los Angeles location of Japan House, an initiative with additional hubs in Londonburi, the porcelain receptacles in which ramen is traditionally served, and renge, the compact, teardrop-shaped spoons that often accompany them, made by 30 leading artists, architects, and designers.
Anicka Yi’s intoxicatingly sensory installations don’t just surround the viewer—many of them literally permeate the body, their sEp. 14 of our At a Distance podcast), in which three industrial steel tanks saturate the air with an aroma concocted by fusing secretions from carpenter an
Integrative nutritionist Daphne Javitch helps people develop their versions of a healthy life—a potentially daunting tasDoing Well, Javitch, a former womenswear consultant at Theory and Uniqlo, offers private health and career coaching as well as groEp. 46 of our At a Distance podcast.)
Born in Grandin, North Dakota, in 1904, the artist Clyfford Still was among the first generation of Abstract Expressioni
In a single word, how does the future make you feel? A towering sculpture by architect Suchi Reddy, founder of the New Y
Darrin Alfred, the curator of architecture and design at the Denver Art Museum (DAM), has wrangled subjects as mesmerizi
Thick, wobbly lines branch out across a wall of Pace Gallery’s global headquarters in New York. Follow each stroke to itwomen, grandpas, and singers craning toward the ceiling, and donuts, hairs, and holes reaching into the ground. Part absurdist diagram, part heart-melting poem, and part consciousness-shifting artwork, thiDavid Byrne: How I Learned About Non-Rational Logic” (on view Feb. 2–March 19), a restorative survey of drawings the musician has made over the past two decades.
With their audacious, gravity-defying forms, skyscrapers have captured the public’s imagination for more than a century.Skyscraper Page, a zany website with a skyscraper discussion forum that has spread to some 100,000 threads. But what’s the point of obs