What on Earth is Nike doing with its wild new branding?

People just don’t get it

‘Just Do it’ is one of the best-known brand taglines around. It’s been serving Nike since 1988, and it’s just as recognisable as its swoosh logo, one of the most famous textless logos. Many would say it didn’t need any other intervention, which has left people perplexed as to why Nike appears to have jumped on a recent typography trend.

People have been commenting on social media to ask why the brand placed a couple of apparently random gothic Blackadder-style letters on a post featuring Spanish tennis star and current men’s singles number one Carlos Alcaraz. But it’s not the one advert. Nike has been changing up the ‘D’ in several recent adverts.

Adaptive logos are having a bit of a moment right now. It’s something that MTV logo did so well back in the 1980s, and the LA28 Olympic Games logo has resurrected the concept with a design that can take on infinite interventions, including, controversially, from the games’ sponsors.

Nike appears to be taking up this idea and running with it, not on its logo, but with the ‘D’ in its ‘Just Do it’ tagline. But people are confused (and not just because of the incorrect punctuation). “What’s with the random Blackletter E and D? Totally unnecessary and adds nothing,” Studio Koto CEO and founder James Greenfield commented on Twitter about the recent advert featuring Alcaraz. Some people even wondered if the design was a real Nike advert or an amateur proposal.

Feature Image credit: Nike