The summer of Brian

Today was my last day at Nike. For those of you who don't know what I did there, I was an art-director and graphic designer creating branding, marketing and communication for the Nike Sportswear and Nike Football brands in Europe, The Middle East and Africa. Nike has a small internal design firm in the EMEA Headquarters and I worked there for the past year and at Nike Headquarters for four years before that on Nike Basketball.

My job was mainly creating branding and communication around Nike products, and doing the packaging and promotion of them in partner retail stores. I also did strategic direction work for the brands, planning concepts and creating design language for upcoming promotions. In addition there has recently been a lot of work creating destination retail and coming up with ad campaigns. It has been really great there, but I am ready for a new challenge after working in the athletic industry for the past seven years.

I was not looking for a job at all when Nike announced a re-structuring a couple of months ago and a 5% job cut along with it. Krista and I talked a lot about what we wanted and decided that it was too early for us to move back to the US, and that if I did get laid off, it would be wonderful to have a back up job possibility so that we could stay.

When the Nike CEO announced that the company would no longer operate a headquarters in Europe, but a regional office instead, I kicked my search into high gear and started working with a headhunting team.

I was very lucky to quickly find a great position with Tommy Hilfiger at their Global headquarters here in Amsterdam. I will be able to bike 10 minutes to work now rather than an hour train ride to the suburbs. That's 2 hours more a day that I can enjoy being here with Krista, Fishstick, Rocket and our friends. I will be doing a very similar role at a higher level in my new job, but focusing much more on photographic art direction and advertising. Tommy has changed a lot since I was in high school and Notorious BIG was rapping about them, but see for yourself:

http://europe.tommy.com/#/collections/mens/sportswear

It ended up that I would have kept my job at Nike, but the search made me realize that I was ready for something new, and luckily this is a great opportunity, especially in these hard economic times.

The way everything turned out, I have the whole month of June off to have fun before I start the new job July 1st. I can't say I am not excited.

It was a hard decision, but I am sure it is the right one. Everyone who leaves Nike writes an email to all of their colleagues and says goodbye, but I swore to myself I would avoid the cliches when I left. So rather than wax about how much I would miss everyone, I made a list of cool stuff I got to do since I started back in April of 2004. I thought I could share it with you, see below if you are interested.

- Brian

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The Coolest Things I Got To Do At Nike
By Brian Schmitt

*not in any particular order, and probably incomplete*

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Meet the ³Redeem Team² Olympic Basketball squad

Design a collection of shoes

Stay in really nice hotels

Make a cartoon about shoe monsters

Meet LeBron James

Get taken to design school by Michael Spoljaric

Make Nike Posters

Sell a marketing plan to Phil Knight with my college roommate

Take an inspiration trip to Canada with the Basketball group

Have lunch in the design library

Work on the athlete pitch for Kevin Durant

Go on photo-shoots with famous people

Make Nike logos

Travel all over the world

Design signature shoeboxes for LeBron James

Tell people I was a Nike Designer

Work and live in Europe

Meet Michael Doherty and significantly lowered my Bacon number

Make Nike Ads

Work on the Doernbecher charity project

Go to lake Tahoe and play golf with college basketball coaches

Make lots of bad jokes to a captive audience

Move to Amsterdam

Go to Berlin with all of Brand Design EMEA

Have dinner with Tinker Hatfield

Collect way too many shoes

Design Nike Stuff for 2 Olympics and 2 World Cups

Have a driver waiting for me at the airport with my name on a sign

Think up ideas for a living

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It¹s been an amazing 5 years!
Goodbye and thanks for the memories.

Cheers,

Brian