As a global giant of just about everything Nike are starting to move in the right direction and earn themselves some environmentally green credentials with a new Better World campaign.
At the core of this campaign is the ethos of
Superior athletic performance. Lower environmental impact.
Which holds true to their roots as well as looking to the future.
They’ve certainly made a great start on this with thanks, in part, to a particularly clever recycling technique. The process involves transforming old and discarded plastic water bottles into football kits for national teams.
That’s right, old water bottles that you or I drink out of, to something that the likes of Ronaldo, Ribéry and Sneijder wear to represent their respective countries. Each of the kits is made with a minimum of 96% recycled polyester, which is equivalent to around 13 plastic bottles!
They are unsurprisingly Nike’s “most environmentally friendly ever” garments due to the fact that they not only save on the raw materials of pure polyester, but make a 30% reduction in energy for manufacturing them too.
After four years of intense research and development Nikeseem to have struck gold with their new “knitted shoe”, launching just just in time for the 2012 Olympics.Presenting their lightest and most sustainable shoe ever, Flyknit. A single, lightweight knit upper is the result of intricately detailed patterns of yarn inter-woven with Nike’s trademark Flywire for additional support.What’s really striking about this design is the collaborative nature in which it all came together. Since no manufacturing technique for this product existed it took a diverse team of programmers, designers and engineers, amongst others, to develop the final design. This led to an “endless amount of prototypes” of varying strengths and elasticities, which were worked through alongside athletes to provide near-instant feedback.
The result is, well, sock-like in construction, and by its very nature provides a snug and natural fit, capable of loosening and contracting with your foot as it flexes and bends with your gait.
The construction of the final product makes it particularly sustainable, as well as performance driven. The single knitted component layer removes the need for cutting out material, and the associated waste, as well as any stitching, glueing, or other joining method which reduces both consumption and cost.
The Flyknit is almost a fifth lighter than Nike’s previous marathon-winning trainer, the Zoom Streak 3, and it provides ideal opportunity for colour customisation by the US, the UK, Kenya, and Russia, whose athletes will be wearing them in this year’s Olympic Marathon.
If you manage to get your hands (or feet!) on a pair – happy running!
With it being London Fashion Week, and especially living in London, it’s tough not to notice at least some of what is going on in the fashion industry even if it does stray somewhat from my typical area of interest. Then I spotted this on Saatchi Design‘s Twitter feed, demonstrating the perfect overlap of disciplines to attract my attention.
Spanish fashion designer Manel Torres has joined forces with Imperial College London‘s finest scientists to develop a world first – spray on clothing which can be worn, washed and worn again. By combining short fibres of either wool, linen or acrylic with a polymer a spray-friendly solvent has been created which can tailor clothes to the individual. No more mere ‘limited editions’ or ‘short customised runs’, each of these pieces is entirely unique. Very neat.
Torres “really wanted to make a futuristic, seamless, quick and comfortable material,” and in doing so has “ended up returning to the principles of the earliest textiles such as felt, which were also produced by taking fibres and finding a way of binding them together without having to weave or stitch them.”
The spray forms a seamless fabric which, amongst others, has fantastic potential for application with sporting garments. In an industry where microns can make the difference between being World Champion or not, streamlining products even further, shaving every fraction of a gram possible, and (quite literally) moulding outfits to competitors could prove extremely fruitful. Take Speedo’s LZR , or Cathy Freeman‘s hooded outfit back in 2000 , both attempting to reduce resistance by the tiniest amounts. Incomprehendible to you or I, but to a challenging World Champion it’s everything.
The controversial LZR from Speedo, and Freeman at the Sydney Olympic Games in 2000.
I’m also aware that apparent “seamless” garments are available on the high street which offers reduced friction and chafing in use, but essentially they are still stitched and manually joined, which when magnified to, say, the Olympics, could make all the difference. I think I’d really like someone such as Nike or Adidas to get their hands on a sample and conduct some athlete wind and speed tests, just to see how much of a difference this technology could make.
As it stands Manel Torres is launching this material as part of his spring/summer collection at the Science in Style show at LFW. A typical t-shirt takes about 15 minutes to spray on, so at the moment its not going to help you get dressed any quicker, but as it is improved you never know – you could well wake up one morning and have a suit sprayed on to your torso as you walk out your front door. The ‘fabric’ is also very cold when sprayed, which could possibly prove problematic for, or certainly prevent the immediate creation of, “spray on underwear” (Oh, come on, you were all thinking about it!).
This breakthrough in materials has prompted the launch of Fabrican Ltd to further develop the product, exploring additional applications such as “providing spray-on bandages without applying any pressure for soothing burnt skin, or delivering medicines directly to a wound.” There is also the increased development for the fashion industry and even furniture and car interiors, which could prompt more natural and organic shaped components which in the past have been difficult or expensive to upholster.
There’s even the potential to embed medicine into the fabric blend, meaning that furniture could be designed to help you quit smoking by simply sitting on a nicotine-infused spray chair!
Fabrican’s “sit down and quit smoking” concept.
More information and videos demonstrating this on the Fabrican site.
Nike, the choice of hi-top trainer for Jordan, the net-bulging boot of Rooney, and the sponsor of the thigh-busting road cyclist Lance Armstrong. All great names, and undoubtedly outstanding sporting performance. But so do many other great brands, the likes of Adidas with Lionel Messi and Lewis Hamilton for Reebok are just a couple that spring to mind. When it comes to being creative though Nike have stepped up their game even more, and are truly in a class of their own.
As I’m sure we all do, I add daily reams of online material to my ‘favourites’. I do my best to keep it orderly and categorised, and recently I noticed that Nike almost deserved a sub-category of their own, their flair for design and advertising creativity seems to consistently be pushing boundaries that no one else at all is considering, let alone other sporting brands.
This turned up a few weeks ago (April 1st to be exact) and was Nike’s spoof video for April Fool’s Day. The concept is great, and the execution even better. Yes it helps to have a team of international superstars at your disposal, but they’ve earned that. I even love the “grunt removal system”!
Most recently I came across this. Very different, but the final product is what we’ve come to expect, polished, fantastic, and even makes you smile a little bit. The rather unique style comes from Sticky Monster Lab, who Nike collaborated with for this.
This recent effort with Wieden+Kennedy to promote Nike Free Run is also a touch of musical genius.
Even their installs look great, this is merely a typical store,
but pixaramic installs like this really turn heads. The Wilson Brothers manually positioned 6,000 acrylic pixel cubes, each with a different coloured face in red, green, yellow, blue, black and white.
To finish, a look at what Nike are offering in the very near future. Due to be first aired during the Champions League Final later this week, this is a sneak preview at their ad for the World Cup showing how a footballer’s successful world can come crumbling down with just one move.
For a bit of nostalgia who remembers Nike’s previous World Cup ads from 1998 and 2002. Brilliant. They continue to produce amazing works, and I for one am looking forward to them all.
Fabrican’s “sit down and quit smoking” concept.
