The Designasty

Aaron Cooper, a former Nike Footwear Creative Director, joins Ken in today’s conversation about Nike’s first-of-its-kind creative culture, design philosophy, and the importance of meaningful relationships both within a team and in one’s everyday life. Aaron also gives us a taste of what it was like to meet and create for legendary athletes like Serena Williams, Kevin Garnett, Lebron James, LaDania...

Ken is joined by his former Nike teammate, Bob Clark, who is a Product Graphic Designer that played a huge role in Nike’s early days outfitting football teams, both in the NCAA and the NFL. Hear Bob’s best stories from his time working on iconic teams like Florida State University, University of Colorado, Kansas State University, the Dallas Cowboys and much more. During this episode, Ken and Bob m...

Ken Black and Keith Houlemard welcome their former Nike teammate David “Boot” Bond, who was on the first Organized Team Sports trip with Ken and Keith and later worked on some of the most iconic Nike shoes of that era with the Air Jordan XI, Air More Uptempo, Flightposite and much more as a footwear product director. David shares his favorite memories from his time at Nike as well as some of the l...

The full story of the Denver Broncos 1997 rebrand is here. Keith Houlemard returns to the conversation, this time to ask the questions and get all the details from Ken Black about designing the new Broncos identity - from the secret meetings with owner Pat Bowlen to the back-to-back Super Bowl victories immediately following the rebrand. During this episode, Ken and Keith mention many other Nike t...

Ken sits with former Nike teammate Nate Retzlaff, who worked on projects like the 1996 Air More Uptempo, Syracuse Basketball, Duke Basketball, Oregon Ducks Football, the Nike Triax watch, and much more. The two share some of the stories behind the designs for a few projects they worked on together and dive into the rest of Nate’s career after he left Organized Team Sports and hopped around through...

Highlighting the Nike rebrands of UConn and Villanova that have stood the test of time, Episode V features first time guest and former Nike OTS designer Michael Scheible. Host Ken Black and Keith Houlemard lead the discussion with Michael to dive deep into design choices and stories about creating the iconic looks for those two schools and talk about a few other projects Michael helped design. Dur...

Drake Ramberg returns to The Designasty, this time to give his full story arc from drawing caricatures of his hometown heroes as a kid to designing kits for some of the most iconic soccer teams around the world. Along with host Ken Black, Drake takes us through his 33-year career at Nike which includes setting up the Nike Design Studio in Europe and designing kits for teams like Arsenal, Borussia...

Keith Houlemard re-joins the conversation with Ken, this time talking about their experiences creating for the Air Jordan line - it had not yet transitioned to become Brand Jordan. They chat about specific design choices and insights for the Air Jordan XI and XII product lines, personal stories about working with MJ directly, and the start of Brand Jordan after Michael’s official retirement, inclu...

Ken Black talks with Keith Houlemard, who is an original member of Nike Organized Team Sports and longtime friend to Ken. In a conversation centered around Nike’s early collaboration in the world of college basketball, they tell stories from their meetings with legendary coaches like Coach K of Duke, Big John Thompson of Georgetown, and Dean Smith of North Carolina. In addition, they break down sp...

Host Ken Black talks with Drake Ramberg, a 33-year Nike veteran and design OG. Together, they talk about the early days of Nike Team Sports and how they both worked to bring sport design into a new era of innovation and performance. They give brief stories about some of their favorite uniform and team designs they got to work on, including the Denver Broncos and Arsenal, setting up stories they wi...