Nike and Taschen explore the design process behind The Ten with ICONS book

Nike has teamed with Taschen on ICONS, a new book delving into the design process behind The Ten – a sneakers collaboration between Nike and Off-White founder Virgil Abloh.

The Ten was a project that saw Abloh deconstruct and redesign ten iconic Nike shoes.

The book traces Abloh’s investigative, creative process through documentation of prototypes, original text messages from Abloh to Nike designers and treasures from the Nike archives.

“The foundation of my practice isn’t nearly the end result — it’s rigor and process of the logic,” said Abloh.

“The archive is the paper trail of those artifacts. The ICONS book is, in a way, the only revealing lens to understand that the catalog of the 50-plus Nike shoes I have designed are in my mind ‘one shoe.’ One story.”

ICONS features text by Hiroshi Fujiwara, Troy Patterson, Glenn Adamson and Abloh himelf, and is art directed and designed by Zak Group to honour the industrial DIY aesthetic of The Ten.