From high school athlete to VP of Design at Nike, Tinker Hatfield is known around the world as the guy who designed the Air Jordan shoes. His career began as a college athlete at University of Oregon, whose coach became one of the founders of Nike, Bill Bowerman. The other founder was Phil Knight. Both were alums of University of Oregon.
Tinker’s coach began designing shoes for his athletes and, Tinker being one, offered ideas to improve Bowerman’s designs. When Tinker, who was a pole vault champion, got injured, he knew his athletic career had ended. He was studying architecture and after college began working at an architectural firm. His initial job working with Nike was designing office and retail buildings for the company. That was in 1981. He’s still there.
Working at Nike he realized he could use his knowledge of architecture to design athletic shoes alongside his old coach and now boss, Bill Bowerman. One of his first major changes in design was making the airbags in the soles of Nike shoes visible. The Air Max 1 was the first in a long series of transformative athletic shoes.
Nike had a contract with Michael Jordan for several years that was on rocky ground. Michael was unhappy with the designs he was seeing and was looking to break his contract. As a last ditch effort to hold onto their star athlete, Tinker was asked to design a shoe for Michael. Not only did he hit it out of the park by creating exactly what Michael had asked for, but he created a complete collection of merchandise to be sold under Michael’s name alongside Nike. The success of the Michael Jordan line brought Nike back from a slow demise. Tinker and Michael continued to work together for many years.
Lest you think the only thing this designer genius creates are athletic shoes, here are some other things he’s designed. Remember NFT’s? Those online only apparitions that became wildly popular a few years ago. The “Flying Formations” NFT for University of Oregon, Tinker’s alma mater, was his creation. The Oregon Ducks license plate was also designed by him, as well as the school’s logo. The magically self lacing shoes worn by Marty McFly in Back to the Future II, known as Air Mags, as well as a car for the video game Gran Turismo. He also designed the football uniforms for the Oregon Ducks team. Camp Hatfield in Sandpoint, Idaho was designed for his wife Jackie. The boots Michael Keaton wore as Batman were also his design.
While most shoe designers are known for gorgeous creations worn on the red carpet, Tinker Hatfield is known for shoes that are not only comfortable to wear, but allow you to be a better, safer, and faster athlete. His shoes have sparked an entire fandom of sneakerheads, folks who collect athletic shoes. According to the website SneakerFreaker, 12 of the 22 most expensive sneakers ever sold at auction were designed by Tinker.
In case you may be wondering what Nike shoes have to do with vintage, the most expensive collection of athletic shoes ever sold is known as the Dynasty Collection. It consists of 8 Nike shoes all worn and signed by Michael Jordan from 1991 through 1998. The collection of single shoes sold for $8 million in February 2024. All were designed by Tinker Hatfield. Now that’s a vintage collection!
If you enjoy this post, check out our other Design Icons here. Looking for more info? Check out this episode of Abstract from Netflix for more on Tinker Hatfield.
