When Nike Football decided it was time for a fresh chapter, they kicked things off with a text message. “Fancy rebranding Nike Football?” asked Nike’s creative director, David Oliva. “Oh, go on then,” replied ILOVEDUST.
It’s not how every global brand brief begins, but then again, this is a partnership built on trust, not bureaucracy. The Brighton-based studio has a long and close working relationship with Nike’s football team at its world headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon. When it comes to redefining one of sport’s most recognisable sub-brands, a little informality helps keep the creativity flowing.
“Luckily, we don’t mind keeping it casual,” says Matt Howarth, design director at ILOVEDUST. “It helps us to create our best work, shackles off and all that.”
The result of that relaxed start is a complete rebrand of Nike Football, including a new logo mark, typographic system and visual language that together signal a new era for the brand. The identity is designed to capture the essence of attacking football, which they define as creative, fearless, and relentlessly forward-looking.
The project began with a deep dive into Nike Football’s past. ILOVEDUST’s designers combed through the archives, pulling inspiration from boot logos, kit designs and other marks embedded in Nike’s DNA.
“From icons, boot logos and kit designs, these iconic Nike Football marks that are ingrained in Nike’s DNA acted as a jumping-off point for us,” says Matt.
This historical research wasn’t just for the sake of nostalgia either. It was all about the bigger picture strategy. Nike is repositioning its football brand for 2025 and beyond, and the new identity needed to align with that shift while staying true to the brand’s legacy. The aim, says Matt, was “a new, bold brand identity rooted in the brilliance of attacking football, celebrating the creative, fearless style of play that athletes and fans love.”
After sketching out countless ideas, the team kept circling back to the late ’90s and early 2000s, which is a period many still see as the golden era of Nike Football. It was a time when the brand’s attitude, athletes and product dominated the game, so naturally, that energy became the foundation for the new direction.
The centrepiece of the rebrand is a redesigned logo that nods to that era while pushing the brand forward. The original logo was perhaps “a touch too retro” for today, so ILOVEDUST reimagined it as an angular, aggressive shield, symbolising modern football while still feeling timeless and deeply rooted in the sport’s iconography. Inside, a perfect circular form featuring the iconic Swoosh represents a Nike football, cleverly “knocked out” of the shield as negative space (a hidden detail for eagle-eyed fans).
Every detail of the mark is intentional. The three points of the shield represent Nike’s three major boot silos – Mercurial, Phantom and Tiempo – tying the visual identity directly to the products at the heart of the brand’s performance offering.
ILOVEDUST also designed a bespoke typographic lock-up and a fresh photographic style to sit alongside it. The photography, built around existing portraits and action shots of Nike athletes, was developed to mirror the same attacking energy and creative edge that defines the rest of the rebrand. These visuals will roll out across Nike retail environments this summer and beyond, bringing the new look to life for fans around the world.
Nike itself describes the rebrand as heralding “a new era of Nike Football” that showcases the brand’s “relentless drive to push the game forwards through creative expression and performance innovation, both backed by deep connections beyond the pitch.”
For Matt and the ILOVEDUST team, the project was about capturing that drive and the passion that fuels it. “We wanted the new logo to convey attacking football,” he says. “That energy was the secret sauce we were looking for.”
It’s an evolution that balances past and future, legacy and innovation – and much like Nike Football itself, it’s built to move fast and play without fear.
