Earlier in the week, Adrianne and I watched AIR on Prime Video, which is the origin story behind Nike’s iconic Air Jordan line of sneakers. It was just okay, if I’m being honest. I’ve liked the main actors in other things, but this was really slow and didn’t offer much in the way of character development. It did however, remind me of an episode of a fantastic Netflix show called Abstract: The Art of Design. The show focuses on a different artist or designer each episode—my favorite is the one about artist Olafur Eliasson—but the episode I was reminded of is about legendary Nike shoe designer Tinker Hatfield. Tinker was studying architecture at the University of Oregon, where he was also pole vaulter coached by Bill Bowerman, the co-founder of Nike. The story goes that while working as an architect, Tinker was invited to participate in a 24-hour design competition, won it, and was told he was now a footwear designer at Nike. His design of the Air Jordan III was said to have saved the company. The rest is sneaker history.
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I agree that the film "Air" was slow; it was not paced in what has become a very typical way. That's not a bad thing (for me). What it was, was a film about business development, risk, and trusting your lieutenants to do good work. Personally, I loved it, especially learning about Jordan's "seat at the table", which was both highly disruptive and highly appropriate. It worked out great for him. I know lots of people of a certain age (much like myself) that gave it a 10; that's hard to argue with from a success standpoint, I think?
As for Abstract: yes, one of the best shows on Netflix (with a few exceptions). The episodes are almost all great, and the one you reference was great storytelling. Highly recommended.
Thanks for the pointer about the III. I confess to not being a Nike fan, but I do enjoy learning about corporate history.