Find Reverse Engineer in NIKE AD, “Just do it” Campaign

Introduction

Nike started a three-decade run of classic advertising with its “Just do it” campaign in 1988. Those three words summed up the brand: do whatever it takes to win, no questions asked. Throughout the campaign, Nike enlisted a range of people from varying ethnicities and races, as well as numerous notable athletes, in order to attract customers and promote the image of Nike as being reliable to not only everyday customers but professional athletes.

This advertisement was published by Nike in September 2018. The person on the advertisement is Colin Kaepernick, who was a National Football League(NFL) player and who spoke up against discrimination and oppression against black people in August 2016. He parted with his team soon after, and then Nike recruited him in 2017, even though there were lots of criticism about it.

Original AD Analysis

First, this original advertisement shows contrast in using a black and white picture, as well as using white for the color of the fonts and logo.

Second, they used the same font consistently throughout the advertisement. The font used is from the Serifs family, which has all curved strokes in the forms of the letters that transition from thick to thin. As they used the same font for the body copy and campaign’s slogan (“Just do it”), it created a unity.

Third, because of the differing widths between the text (blue circles), viewers’ eyes automatically go to the main message, as it is the widest grouping of text, and then go down the ad to the smaller group of text, which is more narrow in comparison.

Fourth, I would like to focus on the alignment. If you look at the yellow lines, you could see that Kaepernick’s face is centered in the advertisement. The main message, logo, and campaign slogan are also placed in the center horizontally (red lines), just like Kaepernick’s face. Also, as the main message is center-aligned horizontally and vertically (red lines).

Additionally, the proximity of space between the sentences in the middle are narrow(green drawover); this is the same as the proximity between the Nike logo and slogan on the bottom. We can find the repetition of the center-alignment and division between main message of the ad and slogan.

New AD Analysis

I drew over the new advertisement that I created. I used the same general design by using a black and white photo of a woman’s face,making it close-up and centered on the advertisement. I also could not find the exact same font from the Kaepernick ad, so I used a font from the Serif family in order to make the connection between my ad and Nike’s ad.

Additionally, the two groups of text (the main message, and the logo and slogan) are centered on the ad, mimicking the composition of the Kaepernick ad. Similar to the original ad, I also varied the widths between the two groups of text, so that the viewers’ attention will go to the middle of the the ad first, where the main message is, and then continue down to the bottom, to the logo and slogan.

Conclusion

As I analyzed the original ad and identified the original rules and design of the composition, I was able to apply them to make a new, but similar, advertisement of my own that is still unified with Nike’s ad and campaign.