Air Jordan designer made Nike a world force
Peter Moore, who has died aged 78, was creative director at Nike and then Adidas, and designed the Air Jordan 1 shoe, which revolutionized the world of sneakers and shot Nike to the top of the sportswear league.
Athletes had been endorsing products for decades, but Moore and his Nike colleague Robert Strasser saw the marketing possibilities of basketball and were the first to build a strategy around designing a pair of shoes specifically for one player. In 1984 Nike signed up Michael Jordan, then a 21-year-old rookie who had just joined the Chicago Bulls, for a down payment of US$250,000 and the promise of his own line of shoes.
The term “Air Jordan” was thought up by the player's agent David Falk, a reference to the shoes' air-filled soles and to Jordan's seeming ability to hang in the air as he delivered his coups de grace. Moore used red, black and white, the Bulls colours — though Jordan initially resisted, saying that red, black and white were the “devil's colours,” by which he meant the colours of North Carolina State, bitter rivals of his University of North Carolina college team.
Jordan first wore his signature footwear on court in November 1985; the NBA immediately banned the shoes as they violated its one-colour rule. However, he continued to wear them for home games, and was fined nearly US$5,000 every time — which Nike happily paid.
They put out a television ad about the ban, and soon young people were camping out to buy a pair. As Moore put it: “Kids like that stuff ... `I'm wearing something I'm not supposed to be wearing.'”
Within a year more than a million pairs had been sold.
Peter Colin Moore was born on Feb. 21, 1944, in Cleveland, Ohio. Graduating in graphic design from Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles, he worked for a design studio, which he subsequently acquired.
In 1972 he moved to Portland, Ore., and five years later took on Nike as a client. In 1983 he became their creative director.
As well as the Nike “swoosh,” the Air Jordans bore the “Jordan Wings” logo, which Moore designed after seeing a child airline passenger with a set of captain's wings on his shirt.
In 1987 he designed another logo for the Air Jordan, the Jumpman, which depicted Jordan in the air, legs wide apart, in the act of smashing home a slam dunk.
Moore left Nike in 1987. He was later global creative director and then CEO of Adidas. He is survived by his wife and three sons.