Nike Zoom Air (1996)

Zoom Air Floppy Disc

start over

You read that right, "Floppy Disc". We created a lot of floppy disc-based interactive marketing pieces at Red Sky in the early days. In fact, that's where we cut our teeth in so-called "rich media"- long before broadband or flash. The advantage that work gave us was that we learned how to create surprisingly rich interactive experiences ahead of the online curve, and we learned how to make them small.

We made things small by focusing on programmatic behavior, as opposed to video clips or animated sequences. It required an intensely close relationship between artist and programmer - more rigorous than is required today.

This piece for Nike was saved onto a 31/2" High Density Floppy Disc, with about 1 MB of available memory. The discs were included in Nike shoeboxes sold in stores.

The piece isn't perfect, it's a little naive, with linear sequences that trap the user- something I wouldn't find acceptable today. But there were some surprising innovations hidden inside:

Click on either of the Penny Hardaway buttons. You'll notice that when your cursor moves across the screen you hear a basketball dribbling - but try moving your cursor fast and turning suddenly. Your shoes squeak on the wood floor. Some of the earliest gestural work we were aware of- beyond pointing and clicking.

It's a playground. And early interactive media playground, but in it you can see a spirit that continued through much of my, and Red Sky's, subsequent work.

Credits:

Creative Director: Joel Hladecek

Programmer: Chris Hurwitz

Art Director: Abbie Rabenowitz

Copywriter (Weiden & Kennedy): Steve Sandoz