designboom Interviews NIKE AIR MAX Creative Director Dylan Raasch
NIKE AIR MAX creative director, Dylan Raasch, famed for his Nike Roshe design, caught up with designboom.com to talk about the 270, NIKE’s first ever, 100% lifestyle AIR MAX.
From detailing the shoes most innovative areas, his personal favourite detail to how a post-apocolytic science professor might interperate our current society based soley off of this shoe, Dylan gives us more of an insight into the thought process and work that’s gone into the creation of the 270.
See a snippet of the interview below, to read the whole thing head here.
designboom: what kind of lifestyle was the AIR MAX 270 designed to improve?
dylan raasch: someone who is on their feet all day and always on the move. before we started on the design we made the decision to innovate around comfort as opposed to performance, which is where we begin with our athletes. this meant not looking at how you get from point a to point b the fastest, but how you maintain comfort when the trip between point a and point b could take all day.
DB: what is its most innovative aspect?
DR: for us, it was all about how you get the biggest draw on air heel displacement so you can get the most impact absorption in every step. we were at the limitation of height, but we engineered the draw in the cavitation to pull another 5mm, which in terms of air units is huge. from there, we built a system that offered the best transition of comfort through the entire shoe, heel-to-toe.
the unit was designed with the same rigor as sport performance, but for the demands of all-day wear
DB: what is your personal favorite little detail?
DR: I personally love how the heel clip and 270 air unit come together on the heel of the shoe. it looks like nothing I have ever seen before and has such a naturally beautiful shape.
DB: what was the hardest artistic compromise the team had to make in order to engineer the shoe?
DR: initially, we wanted to create a unit that was much bigger! our talented team of engineers developed some test air units that went beyond the final production height, but stability became an issue and we had to make a comprise that gave us a balance of stability and cushioning that feel right in the sweet spot. the bigger unit looked cool but it actually didn’t feel as right. but hey, that gives us something to continue to work towards.
Full interview here.
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