NIKE | MAGISTA BRAIN
Millington Associates were commissioned by the Nike Global Retail Lab in Portland, Oregon to help turn their imagination into reality for the Magista 2 football boot. We were given visuals of a brain made from the flyknit thread of the famous boot, representing the direct and instinctive link between foot and brain. Central to the question the Nike design team had been asking themselves: What if the foot had evolved as if it were designed to play football? The colour scheme is guided by the heat map of the foot. For the build, we sculpted 2 polystyrene hemisphere formers, onto which the curves of the flyknit brain were mapped out. Using steel rods, hand bent and tacked into place, the brands 3D profile started to take shape. The formers were burnt away leaving a light weight sculpture to which more structure was added, enabling suspension in a window supporting their own weight. The brain was finished in hand mixed neon paints to match the Magista 2 shoe before being packed into crates and sent to Oregon where our team were ready to install it at the Retail Lab.