Bureau Mirko Borsche works with Nike Basketball on a new graphic language

Bureau Mirko Borsche has worked with the Nike Basketball brand design team to “create a unique but bold graphic language, which works in different scenarios and mediums,” according to the studio. In a flurry of recent Tumblr updates, the studio revealed the breadth of work it created over five months of working with Nike last year, which saw the teams work together to create a new set of campaign materials including posters, ads, logos, social media fodder and book spreads.  

“It all started with us doing a book for Nike Basketball, from that we created a new look and changed typefaces for the basketball campaign,” Bureau Mirko Borsche explains. “In the end, the project became bigger and bigger and eventually turned in to a 360 degree campaign.”

This small snippet of the campaign and accompanying work is an energetic a mix of graphically led spreads for a Nike Basketball manifesto, with slick lookbook-like portraits of athletes in Nike clothing and bold, brash phrases emblazoned across the page. In typical Nike fashion it’s powerful and dynamic, but the studio avoids shouting at the audience in its considered use of text and colour from burnt reds to dusky blues.  

“The athletes are the focus, the design should never conflict with the content. Emotions and the lifestyle of the sport are important. We wanted to show that basketball is not just a sport, it is also a lifestyle and a culture that reaches deep into fashion and music.” This notion is emphasised through the text elements introduced throughout the campaign such as “It’s more than a game” and “It’s a way of life we helped create” among other punchy, impactful slogans. 

For Bureau Mirko Borsche, the most interesting part is to see how far the campaign reaches: “It’s great to think that at this moment in Japan some kid is playing in a Nike shirt with our logo, which we created in Munich – in this sense basketball really brings people together.”