Nike Air Max 87-17

The Air Max 1 came out in 1987, the first Nike shoe to show its Air unit from the outside. Nike spent 2017 marking its 30th anniversary, with retro Air Max 1 releases in the original red, white, and gray, the Air Max 1 Ultra 2.0, and the launch of the VaporMax on Air Max Day, March 26. We made it internally, Nike Brand Design EMEA with Nike Sportswear, and Nike Brand Design briefed and creative directed the outside agencies.

Why it looks like this

The inside-out building. Nike’s own history of the shoe says Tinker Hatfield found the idea in Paris, at the Centre Pompidou, a building “designed like it’s inside-out,” while Nike was “struggling with how to expose the air bag so you could see it from the outside of the shoe.”