One of the first design rules everybody learns is Louis H. Sullivan's 1896 proclamation that that "form ever follows function, and this is the law."
Only later do you begin to appreciate that "function" isn't a given but has to be defined if "form" is to be able to meaningfully follow it.
Only much later do you appreciate the complexities in defining "function".
With Nike: Form Follows Motion the Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein, explore the (hi)story of Nike, design at Nike and also approach the form function relationship in context of the company's products.......
As an exhibition Nike: Form Follows Motion opens, as the (hi)story of Nike begins, in the arenas of 1960s/70s US track and field sports, specifically with an introduction to some of the company's earliest products and earliest protagonists including Nike co-founders Bill Bowerman and Phil Knight: the former a successful college athletics coach, the latter a business graduate from first the University of Oregon, later Stanford University, who had been one of Bowerman's charges during his time at the University of Oregon and who, as one learns in Form Follows Motion, during his time at Stanford had researched the question of how to break the market dominance of Adidas in the USA. Knight's answer was first called Blue Ribbon Sports, subsequently Nike. And which adds a whole new significance to Nike replacing Adidas as the German national football team kit supplier. One could almost speak of mission creep.
And also introduces Diane Katz who in 1978 became Nike's first clothes designer thereby allowing the, still, fledgling company to move away from the shoes that were Bowerman and Knight's business. A Diane Katz who was responsible for not only a myriad, defining, early Nike clothing collections, including the original Air Jordan articles and many of the first Olympic outfits for Team USA, including that for the 1980 Moscow Olympics on show in Form Follows Motion but which on account of the US boycott, never saw active service, and also a number of sport clothing innovations, a number of novel forms that aided and abetted more comfortable motion, and occasionally followed motion. If a Diane Katz who we've just realised doesn't have a Wikipedia page, which is highly instructive in terms of the processes by which not just design (hi)story but (hi)story in general becomes the (his)tory we all read it as but don't always recognise it as.
An introductory chapter that also elucidates the relevance and importance of Japanese manufacturer Onitsuka Tiger to the early development of Nike: not only did Phil Knight start his attack on Adidas through importing and distributing Onitsuka Tiger shoes, nor only was, as one learns, one of the earliest Nike breakthrough products, the so-called Cortez from 1972, based on a Onitsuka Tiger model, a case of Form Follows Onitsuka Tiger, but there is an argument to be made, an argument Form Follows Motion empowers you to make, that Carolyn Davidson's Nike Swoosh is but Onitsuka's Tiger markings flipped over and visually reduced. We're not saying that is what happened, we don't know, we weren't there, we know that it is also a reduced depiction of a wing of Nike, the Greek God of victory. But, when you view the two next to one another in a vitrine in Forms Follows Motion, it's very hard not to see the short step from one to the other.
From the USA athletics arenas of 1960s and 70s Form Follows Motion accompanies Nike through the developments of the past 50ish years, starting with the chapter Air which, in addition to the eponymous Nike sole, also explores the company's diversification away from athletics into other forms of sport and the associated changes in Nike, its positions and its understandings of itself, if one so will the development of the Nike soul. Expansions into new dominions where while form is still focussed on motion that motion is less running fast in a straight line and increasingly running fast around a tennis court, pulling an ollie, rising for a slam dunk, et al; and continuing on to the chapter Sensation which explores Nike products through matrixes such as material or performance with a particular focus on the work of the Nike Sport Research Lab, that institution responsible today for not only the form of Nike sport products that aid and abet motion but also the development of new Nike sport products.
Three chapters which in addition to a wide range of Nike products, prototypes, tools, archive materials, et al, also features a great many of those sports stars who are today inextricably associated with Nike, including, for example, Serena Williams, LeBron James or Ronaldinho. And also a series of videos of such sports stars in their Nike shoes, videos that were Nike promotional material back in the day. And in context of Form Follows Motion the videos are? ¿Archive material of Nike's communication design? ¿Or, perhaps, the Nike promotional material they always were? ¿How are they to be viewed?
A question that brings us to our world famous, or famous in our world, Thonet Test: that framework we developed in context of the 2014 exhibition Sitting – Lying – Swinging. Furniture from Thonet at the Grassi Museum for Applied Arts, Leipzig, to determine in how far a monographic exhibition devoted to a brand is an independent exploration of that brand, or a misuse of a museum context to advertise a brand, a museumwashing of a brand if one so will.
A test we always apply to monographic exhibitions of brands.
How did Form Follows Motion perform?
???
Things didn't start well.
Not at all well.
One of the first texts you read on entering Form Follows Motion's opening chapter proclaims: "Design and sports are a powerful combination. No company demonstrates this better than Nike..." Really? Honestly? "No company"? Discuss... although why bother, the curators leave you no room for contradiction. It is so. Nike are the unquestionable measure of all things in context of design and sports. And the exhibition you are about to view is thus, one assumes, a demonstration of that unquestionable supremacy and primacy. It is after all being staged in a leading international design museum, a location with genuine authority.
As you despair, and consider skipping the exhibition and heading back to the Depot Deli for more cheesecake, you become aware of the video playing on constant loop next to you, a promotional film from 1980 explaining how Nike shoes are created and produced, a description that, to a great extent, describes how shoes have been made since the late Middle Ages while making it sound like Nike magic, which sets an awful lot of alarm bells ringing, and that ends with the phrase "A shoe, a Nike shoe is born", accompanied by riotous applause and wild cheering from an unseen mass public. Pass the sick bag.
And as you progress through Form Follows Motion you regularly meet texts that hover between corporate PR and fan-boy/girl adulation, not all texts do, but many do; limitations of time and space prevent us from including a full linguistic analysis, but it's all very positive, all very rosy, upbeat, often echos the hyperbolic constructions of an Ulrich Müther, Nike are brilliant, aren't we all lucky that Nike exist. Thank you Nike! Then there are the aforementioned advertisements. And as you're increasingly exposed to such the exhibition title appears programmatic. And problematic.
Then you go upstairs, and enter the fourth chapter, Relation.
A final chapter that is sneaker erotica. Pure and simple.
A final chapter we found ourselves in at the same time as a large group of teenagers, a group we observed closely in terms of how they moved through the space, how they communicated with one another as they moved, how they responded to the display of some 50 Nike sneakers, more accurately Nike limited editions, collaborations and Special Make Ups, for and with the likes of, and amongst innumerable others, the retailer Patta, clothing creator Riccardo Tisci, graffiti artist Claw Money, Hip Hoper DJ Clark Kent or Elton John Elton John, each on a pedestal in its own glass vitrine. The teenagers response to the shoes can be best described as: visual. Purest objectification without any emotional engagement.1 Similarly the numerous immaculately groomed men over 40 in jeans and hoodies, and all in Nike trainers, who we also observed in the final chapter. And who all, young and old alike, uncritically fawned over the Nike shoes much as Form Follows Motion fawns over them.
A celebration of Nike trainers, a mythologising of Nike trainers, that is augmented by the manner in which the roof of Frank Gehry's Vitra Design Museum building resembles the roof of a religious house, creates the impression that you are in a religious place, in a sacristy.2 And, yes, that is a deliberate reference to Sacristy by Kang Sunkoo at Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau, and the questions it poses about the processes, rituals, vocabularies of mythologising and devotion, and which also compliments the questions of how we assess and assign a value to objects of everyday use posed by Ieva Baltrėnaitė-Markevičė's project The Secrets of the (Un)Processed Collection as seen at the 9th Tallinn Applied Art Triennial. What makes a Nike trainer more valuable than any other trainer? What makes the Nike trainers in the final chapter of Form Follows Motion more valuable than any other Nike trainer? What makes any one chair more valuable than any other? What makes any one steel tube chair more valuable than any other? What is the basis for that assessment? What evidence can you offer to support that assessment? And if the answer is no more than a name, the branding, the expensive PR campaigns, and/or the signature, be that a signature signature or a graphic signature, what does that tell us about contemporary society? Should we be surprised at the contemporary geopolitical landscape? ¿Could, should, we perhaps do things differently?
¿Could, should, we perhaps assess and value our objects of daily use and our politicians and our fellow human beings differently?
Then there is the video for Nelly's 2002 track Air Force Ones, a track on constant loop in the final chapter, a track you can't escape, that pervades every corner of the upper floor, every corner of your brain, and whose endless repetition of "Air Force Ones" and admonishment that "if the shoe is on the shelf, You should have some, man, You can not sit up and tell me that you have none", "Air Force Ones", "Air Force Ones", "Air Force Ones", means that by the time you leave the space, you desperately need a pair, ideally two pairs like Nelly. Since visiting Form Follows Motion we've tried very hard but can develop no argument for the track being an example of the cultural significance of "Air Force Ones". For it ain't. It is a coarse reinforcement of the objectification of the Nike brand, of the marketing of the Nike brand, of the positioning of the Nike brand, of the processes and rituals of mythologising.3 And Form Follows Motion doesn't question that. But you must. Assuming you can after the intense brainwashing.
If a final chapter that amongst all the fawning objectification also includes a copy of Friedrich von Borries 2004 book Who's Afraid of Niketown?: Nike Urbanism, Branding and the City of Tomorrow, a work which, and summarising more than is perhaps prudent, critically imagines the development and existence of a speculative future Berlin as shaped, informed, controlled by corporate marketing, an urban space beholden to and dependent on the demands, and benevolence, of Nike, (Social) Form Follows Nike, one can argue over the degree to which a developing dystopia is described, with, arguably, Nike more as an example than a warning. Not that any of the teenagers, or 40+ Nike wearing men, we observed stopped to reflect on why Who's Afraid of Niketown? was there, why it was amongst the shoes they were objectifying and fantasying after, why the blaspheming in this most sacred of spaces, or to reflect on how it stood in relation to the world Nelly was busy celebrating. Far less employed it as the conduit to the many less easy to celebrate facets of the Nike (hi)story and contemporary existence Nelly hasn't written a track about, nor ever will, the curators seek to use it as. While noticeably not highlighting those unrosy aspects directly themselves elsewhere.4 And a Who's Afraid of Niketown? we didn't see in the Vitra Design Museum bookshop. Maybe it was sold out the day we were there. There were however an awful lot of sneaker erotica publications on offer.
Which, yes, sounds like an accusation, is however an observation. If one that, admittedly, didn't need to be made.
And, yes, in which context, we would accept the accusation that we travelled to Weil am Rhein not expecting to like Form Follows Motion, would admit to the deep irritation, vexation, when the Vitra Design Museum first announced the exhibition was coming, and would freely acknowledge that such may have left us more sensitive to linguistic and semantic triggers than would have been the case in an exhibition we'd actively been looking forward to; but would strongly reject the accusation that most of the above lines were written in the train on then way to Weil am Rhein. We're many, many things, but not unfair, and always seek to approach whatever is before us openly and objectively. Yes, and as with everyone, invariably though a conditioned gaze and in context of personal decision making frameworks, but always with the awareness that we have such a gaze and frameworks, and thus of the effort needed to achieve the necessary distance. A necessary distance to its subject Form Follows Motion doesn't always posses, at times the distance between Beaverton, Oregon, and Weil am Rhein, Baden-Württemberg, shrinks noticeably.
But those are also but moments in an expansive exhibition. And which must be viewed and approached as such.
There are also moments when Form Follows Motion is a very satisfying museal presentation.
And moments where one experiences design.
Including in the development in the early 1970s of the so-called waffle sole by Bill Bowerman, a waffle sole so-called because it originated on a waffle iron and thus resembles a waffle, Form Follows Breakfast, a development that has echoes of a Marcel Breuer on his bike in Dessau, or Yrjö Kukkapuro is his snow drift in Finland, as a stimulus. And a development of the waffle sole that, as Form Follows Motion helps elucidate, can, must, be understood as a moment in a long process of research by Bowerman into shoes, shoe systems, that aid and abet athletes, of form supporting motion through enabling better grip. Or the Air soles, that response by Frank Rudy to questions of protecting feet in sports shoes, research initially begun externally to Nike, and in context of ski boots, but which when Rudy approached Nike they enthusiastically took up and worked with Rudy to develop the principle. Or Flyknit, a 3D knitting process that was launched in 2008 as a development of an earlier process in which certain parts of a shoe were reinforced with a synthetic yarn, with Flyknit the shoe upper in its entirety is knitted from a synthetic yarn with all the advantages that brings with it, not least the manner it which it contributes to reducing Nike's... reducing Nike's... Nike's... footprint. Sorry!! Couldn't resist.
Thus a Flyknit process that is an instructive reminder of design as a re-imaging of the existing in a manner that reduces our impact on the future. Of the necessity of design re-imaging the existing.
Three examples of textile/material design that are also very neat examples of both that way in which novel materials and novel production processes drive change in our objects of daily use and also of the importance of the interplay between technical and creative forces in ensuring that the novel becomes meaningful.
And three examples that also allow one to visualise how the near future could look if Nike are able to fully embrace the possibilities of 3D scanning and 3D printing/weaving/knitting in a decentralised production system to enable locally produced bespoke shoes where Form Follows Foot. That basic tenet of the cobbler's trade since the late Middle Ages, that place where in many regards Nike began with a Bill Bowerman creating bespoke shoes for individual athletes, and thus a nice reinforcement that for all technology changes the challenges we face rarely do.
Or at least not as regularly and fundamentally as the technology changes.
And a reminder that technology is always a tool, never an answer. We need to develop the answers ourselves.
Then there's the final chapter.
Yes, that final chapter with its fawning over limited editions, collaborations and Special Make Ups, and where the concentration of such, and the regularity of cooperation partners from a limited range of specific milieus, allows one to appreciate all too clearly what Nike are doing, allows one to peak behind the velvet curtain the Wizard is normally so careful to keep closed; you can see them positioning their brand, defining how Nike is to be read, seeking out those markets they consider to be most profitable, whispering in the ears of teenagers, explaining how Nike shoes can be used in your personal staging, exploiting that long-standing human need to be part of a collective identity by way of not only escaping the loneliness of the individual but of finding a meaning for the self, a meaning of existence, "Air Force Ones", "Air Force Ones", Buy them!! Buy them!! Buy two pairs!! "Air Force Ones" You can be like me!! "Air Force Ones". Yes, there is also a Nelly Air Force One on show. Form Follows Nelly.
A final chapter on the upper floor of the Vitra Design Museum that has nothing to with the other three chapters on the ground floor, a Nike on the upper floor that has nothing to do with the Nike on the ground floor: the physical act of climbing the stairs is to move from one Nike to another Nike. Two Nikes that do however exist in a very pleasing dialogue with one another, a dialogue that very satisfyingly allows you to reflect not only on the form function relationship but on the term design, to reflect on that Qu'est-ce que le design? the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, asked Charles Eames, Verner Panton, Roger Tallon, Joe Colombo and Fritz Eichler in 1969.
For lest we forget we are viewing a design exhibition in a design museum. We're not in a fantasy shoe shop.
Whereas in the first three chapters an argument can be made that while form may not always directly follow motion, aiding and abetting motion is very much the raison d'etre of the form, there is a direct relationship between form and motion, in the final chapter motion is irrelevant, rather form follows name, form follows fad, form follows marketing, form follows corporate identity, form follows social media, form follows ego, form follows the money. Thus if the first three chapters help elucidate how the process via which a "A shoe, a Nike shoe is born" has changed in the forty odd years since the birth of the Columbia trainer of the nauseating 1980 film in the opening chapter, so to does the final chapter. But they are very different Nike shoes. And very, very different gestations. Which is highly instructive, also in terms of not just the term design but of contemporary popular use of the term design.
Downstairs one does find design, does find the "research of the information and the method for the remedy of the problem"5 a Roger Tallon opined design was in 1969, upstairs is all about styling, a styling that is the antithesis of design, a styling that is intimately related the horrors of t****, a styling that for the greater part of his career a Karl Clauss Dietel railed against as not only a compelled consumerism, but a key component of a forced obsolescence in objects of daily use society and the environment couldn't afford; a styling of which in 1969 Joe Colombo censured, "enchants the consumer who has already suffered through the action of the "media" and the objectification of design, a brainwashing"6, "Air Force Ones", "Air Force Ones", "Air Force Ones". A styling whose modus operandi since time immemorial is to disguise itself as design and that in doing so has seen the borders between the two become increasingly blurred; or as Verner Panton opined in context of Qu'est-ce que le design?, "through some kind of "artistic" mystery, design has unfortunately become a buzzword, diverted from its true meaning. Too many people consider that the designer is a man [sic] who adds a decorative touch to everyday objects, or denatures familiar shapes until they become new and elegant. The designer's work is more than that, and much more important for society."7
What are the shoes in the final chapter of Form Follows Motion if not everyday objects with an added decorative touch and/or that have been denatured? And then pitched as design via expensive PR campaigns. And rappers. And whose obsolescence is tangible. And planned from the outset as a component of a corporate strategy.
Yes, Verner Panton could be wrong. As could Joe Colombo, Karl Clauss Dietel and/or Roger Tallon. But are they? We could be wrong. Qu'est-ce que le design?
But regardless of whether Panton is right or wrong, the final chapter, the dialogue between the final and the first three chapters, very satisfyingly highlights the manner in which Nike's diversification away from athletics since the early 1980s has seen it bifurcate into a lifestyle brand that is dependent on a sports brand, not least for its backstory and legitimacy, but that it shares little with, save a Swoosh.
And assuming for the sake of argument, for the sake of our argument, Panton is correct, (he is), the dialogue between the final and the first three chapters also neatly highlights the very real danger design finds itself in today, and how that danger, despite having been present for decades, has been exponentially increased in our contemporary visual, egoistic age, much as the dangers to the natural environment we all rely on have been known for decades, but became enhanced through the ego of contemporary society. And that also highlights the consequences of a decline in design for human society, the dangers of a society based on the hollowness and disingenuousness of styling and marketing, of presentation over content, of commerce over culture.
And, no, we didn't write that on the train on the way to Weil am Rhein either.
Thus stands as an admonishment of the need for us all to not only reflect more on Qu'est-ce que le design? but to defend design, and to stop letting ourselves be taken in by those who misuse the term design. Nike is design, without question, but Nike is also an abuse of the term design, an abuse of culture in the interests of commerce.
Which we don't believe the curators intended Form Follows Motion to elucidate, indeed we're still mulling over how the 50 styled sneakers of the final chapter managed to, well, sneak, their way into the normally so strictly guarded Vitra Design Museum, although we're very glad they did because the juxtaposition of the two contemporary Nikes their presence enables is not only very satisfying but highly instructive.
A well conceived and designed exhibition that moves along at a sprightly pace, but not one that requires high-tech sneakers to keep up, and that pleasingly portions a wide ranging subject to manageable but not superficially so chunks, Form Follows Motion, for all that you at times do have to fight your way through the more corporate and fan-boy/girl moments, enables genuinely informative insights into not only the (hi)story of Nike, but how design has contributed to that (hi)story, how design has allowed Nike to contribute to the development of sport and to the development of sport as component of contemporary society... which, yes, means Form Follows Motion past the Thonet Test. This text wouldn't exist if it hadn't. We are very aware of our responsibilities in terms of supplying the oxygen of publicity. And in defending design.
An exhibition that through juxtaposing sport and lifestyle, and through juxtaposing culture and commerce, allows it to expand beyond its central narrative without losing sight of that narrative, and that through the things it tangibly doesn't do encourages you to explore for yourself those less rosy aspects of Nike and thereby to further develop the appreciations of Nike, of Nike then, now and future, enabled in and by the exhibition. And that also, and very pleasingly so, features Diane Katz, whose inclusion in a (hi)story, a (his)tory, she's popularly been written out of reminds why professionally researched museum exhibitions are important. And why we should all visit design museums more often than we do.
And thus an exhibition that takes Nike's shoes in their myriad forms and functions as a starting point for a more detailed exploration of not just Nike but Nike's relationships to wider society over the past 50 years, Nike's relationships to design over the past 50 years and thereby not only brings you a little closer to Nike, but a lot closer to appreciations that while Form Follows Function may not be the best maxim for designing any given product, and certainly isn't a law, it is an excellent framework for analysing the complex relationships between objects and society, analysing how objects follow society and society follows objects. Complex relationships that are in constant motion.
Nike: Form Follows Motion is scheduled to run at the Vitra Design Museum, Charles-Eames-Str. 2, 79576 Weil am Rhein until Sunday May 18th.
Full details can be found at www.design-museum.de
After Weil am Rhein Nike: Form Follows Motion will set of on a global tour, we currently don't have any confirmed dates, check local press for details, or www.design-museum.de/worldwide
1In no way do we want to imply that either the teenagers we observed in the Vitra Design Museum or teenagers in general lack the emotional and intellectual faculties for a non-visual communication with Nike sneakers. That's not our intention, apologies if that's how it comes across. It's simply an unscientific snapshot of a moment of a random group of teenagers' visit to the exhibition employed as a rhetoric tool, a more scientific analysis would have required observing them throughout the entire visit, and a questionnaire. And a control group.
2We're very aware that we've just set erotica and religion as one and the same thing, that wasn't deliberate but is instructive. And a subject we'll come back to....
3We've also spent a lot of time comparing Air Force Ones by Nelly with Run D.M.C.'s 1986 track My Adidas, and also questioning if there is an argument for My Adidas being an example of the cultural significance of Adidas, and that not least because of the role of Adidas in the rise of Nike. A comparison between Nelly and Run D.M.C. we recommend you all make and see where it takes you. And also recommend you consider both the imagery in the video of Run D.M.C vs Jason Nevins It's Like That from 1983/1997 with the contemporary street culture imagery employed by Nike, and also compare the link between the visuals and the lyrics of It's Like That with the link between the visuals and the lyrics of Air Force Ones. Hip Hop started somewhere, and for a reason. Then got lost. Then Nas pronounced it dead.
4In the interests of fairness, and completion, there is also a Nike: Form Follows Motion catalogue whose contents we aren't familiar with, but which may tackle some of those aspects the presentation doesn't.
5Joe C. Colombo, Charles Eames, Fritz Eichler, Verner Panton, Roger Tallon: Qu'est ce que le design?, Centre de Création Industrielle, Paris, 1969
6ibid
7ibid
