Emotion By Design: Creative Leadership Lessons from a Life at Nike

When Jeff translated that to the brand and business world, it meant if you want to be an innovator, you need to defy the conventional tactics, and take the lead from the start and let the competition react.

The man in the center of the photo, flanked by twenty other designers, was Ron Dumas, head of the Image Design team and creator of the Jordan “Wings” poster—which showed a life-size Jordan in his Bulls uniform with outstretched arms, one hand palming a basketball, above a quote from William Blake: “No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wi

Put simply, a brand gains a competitive advantage through its ability to construct powerful emotional bonds with its consumers. I believe this connection can be consistently achieved by cultivating a strong creative culture. I call this Emotion by Design—the ability to create stories, images, and experiences that make people feel that even their mo

Shred. A mobile app, Shred connects users to outdoor adventures all around them (or to places they’re traveling to), and to each other, making it easy to do something fun and active without a lot of online research.

“Now more than ever,” I said, “it’s important for a brand to be more human in this age of automation.”

The Product Is the Hero

Viewed in this way, the poster does far more than showcase another great athlete; it distills the very purpose of Nike—the core of its brand—into an image: You too are an athlete capable of greatness.

When introducing a new innovation to the world, the goal is always to make the benefit of that innovation both intuitive and meaningful.

When I speak about brand identity to my audiences, I often use the metaphor of a picture frame. Your brand identity is how you frame every image, every product, every bit of output from your brand. The frame shouldn’t overshadow the picture—or the thing you’re trying to showcase—but it should contain recognizable elements that would tell anyone thi