30 Years of Nike Basketball Shoes

This is poster I found through a sneaker campaign, it’s poster advertising the Nike Vandal, a basketball sneaker produced by Nike in 1985. A graphic designer and illustrator called Billie Jean produced this poster.


This piece was produced for a recent campaign made by Nike, to re-launch the Nike Vandal. It maintains to keep the ‘old school’ style, as it incorporates images from the 80s such as the iconic space invader alien, and cubes that could represent a Rubix cube. The artist uses a biro pen to complete, giving the impression that this creative piece was created by a student, who may have just been doodling in a boring class. The artist made the Nike Vandal the center piece compared to the small scaled drawings around the sneaker, The number ’85’ is also emphasized to give a clear message of the year the shoe was made. The artist has also incorporated a surrealism ideal to the piece, as the shoelaces are seen going into a wild bundle and final ending up into hands. Visual images used such as basketball players are quite obvious to the purpose, although the use of a peace sign, heart and an American Bulldog is not so obvious, but we can assume that the mid 80s were a very live and happy decade.

The media used by Billie Jean was a biro pen, although it looks like some elements were transferred onto a photo editing software to add the peace sign and the small sticker, which has a picture of the actual shoe. The artist has also used cross hatching techniques to add tone to the shoe giving it a 3D look.