Air Jordan Jumpman Logo History
Opening night tipped off Oct. 20, and a championship banner climbed to the Madison Square Garden rafters before the Knicks took on the 76ers. Down on the hardwood, a much smaller figure flew all night. You could spot him on sneaker tongues and heel tabs, legs split and one arm stretched toward a rim that isn't there.
Nobody needs a caption to name him. He's the Jumpman, a black silhouette Nike cut from a single Michael Jordan leap. Since 1988 he has pushed a winged basketball off the shoe, and he once landed Nike in a copyright fight over who owned the pose.
What To Know
- Peter Moore sketched the first Air Jordan logo, the Wings, in 1984. It debuted on the Air Jordan I in 1985.
- The Jumpman pose traces back to a 1984 Life magazine photo by Jacobus Rentmeester and a later Nike reshoot in Bulls colors.
- Tinker Hatfield's Air Jordan III put the Jumpman on a shoe for the first time in 1988.
- Rentmeester sued Nike in 2015. The Ninth Circuit affirmed the dismissal of his case on Feb. 27, 2018.
- Nike reports Jordan Brand results inside its Nike Brand segments, with no separate revenue line.
1984 To 1985: A Winged Ball And A Magazine Leap
Peter Moore designed the Air Jordan I and its first logo. He later recalled a flight home from a meeting with Jordan's agent, David Falk, when he noticed the plastic pilot wings a flight attendant had given a child.
Moore asked for a pair of his own and sketched them on a napkin with a basketball in the middle. The finished emblem set the words "Air Jordan" above that winged ball, and it sat on the ankle of the shoe. Moore drew it in 1984, and it debuted on the Air Jordan I in 1985.
Meanwhile, the second logo started with a magazine shoot that same year. Life hired Jacobus Rentmeester to photograph American Olympians for an issue tied to the 1984 Los Angeles Games, and his picture of Jordan in Team USA gear ran across two pages.
Rentmeester asked Jordan to copy a grand jeté, a ballet leap that few players would ever use on a dunk. In his frame, Jordan grips the ball in his left hand while his bent limbs carry him forward more than up.
Nike took notice. That August, Moore paid $150 for temporary use of the photo's slides. Nike then staged its own shoot in Chicago with photographer Chuck Kuhn, and this time Jordan wore Bulls colors and leaped in front of the city skyline.
Kuhn's frame changed the details. Jordan's limbs straightened, and his back hand reached out flat where Rentmeester's version showed it bent.
1985 To 1988: A Hang Tag Before A Logo
Nike put its photo to work in the summer of 1985. The leaping image showed up on the Air Jordan I hang tag and in early ads for the shoes and apparel, but it never appeared on the shoe itself.
Rentmeester says he threatened to sue in March 1985. By his account, he then granted Nike a two-year license for North American posters and billboards in exchange for $15,000.
Behind the scenes, the team that built the Wings started to break up. Marketing executive Rob Strasser left to launch a consulting firm called Sports Inc., and Moore soon followed him. Tinker Hatfield inherited the Jordan line, and Nike never gave a major reason for retiring the Wings as the primary mark.
1988 To 2015: The Jumpman Lands On The Tongue
The Air Jordan III arrived in 1988 at $100 a pair. Hatfield made it the first Air Jordan to carry the Jumpman, and he put the figure on the tongue.
Nike traced the logo from Jordan's outline in its own photo and filled the shape with solid black. The ball rides high in his left hand, and his trailing arm stretches out flat behind him. Inside the outline, every detail drops away, down to the jersey number.
That reduction does most of the work. A full photo needs room to read, but a filled shape holds up on a tongue label or a hang tag. In its plainest form, the figure prints in solid black (#000000, CMYK 0, 0, 0, 100).
Falk later recalled a debate over the basketball. The early plan kept the ball for athletic gear and dropped it for upscale products. Over time, though, the ball became part of the mark for good.
The type changed as well. Moore's original "Air Jordan" lettering carried small, pointed serifs, and later versions swapped them for plainer, sportier letterforms.
2015 To 2018: Rentmeester V. Nike
Rentmeester sued Nike in federal court in Oregon in 2015, 27 years after the Jumpman first appeared on a shoe. He claimed that Nike's photo and the Jumpman logo both copied his 1984 image.
The district court dismissed the case. It found that the two images weren't similar enough to support an infringement claim.
On appeal, the Ninth Circuit affirmed on Feb. 27, 2018. The panel agreed that Rentmeester's photo showed real originality and deserved broad protection. Even so, it held that the images were not substantially similar as a matter of law.
The ruling turned on the line between an idea and its expression. Rentmeester could protect his own choices, such as camera angle and timing, while the pose itself stayed open to anyone. Other photographers, the court wrote, remain free to shoot Jordan in a "leaping, grand jeté inspired pose."
From there, the court compared the details. Jordan's straight limbs in Nike's photo suggest vertical lift, while his bent limbs in Rentmeester's photo suggest forward motion. Because Nike's photo didn't infringe, the logo claim failed too, since the Jumpman stylizes that same figure.
2018 To 2026: A Silhouette That Stands In For The Man
These days the silhouette does the job a name used to do. You don't need the word "Jordan" beside it to know whose leap it records.
Falk has pointed to that simplicity as the reason the mark lasted. He also argued that Jordan was already a brand before the logo took off, and that few athletes could carry one of their own. A few have built one anyway, as the Lewis Hamilton logo shows.
Nike's financial reporting tells you less. Its fiscal 2026 annual report folds Jordan Brand results into its Nike Brand segments, so the company publishes no standalone revenue line for the brand behind the logo.
Team marks on the same floor took different routes. The Spurs built their identity on restraint, while the Knicks and the Pistons both refit their badges over the decades.
Out West, the Nuggets and the Timberwolves went through their own redesigns. The Jumpman, by contrast, has kept one figure since 1988.
This season, the figure turned up on opening night again, 38 years after it first landed on a tongue. The jump behind it happened four decades ago in a Chicago photo shoot. On the floor, Jordan still hasn't come down.
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