Human actions have never had such a great impact on the planet as they do today and for every product we decide to consume there are associated environmental impacts. The same applies to a designer, making material decisions in the product creation process.
For this Material Science class assigniment, we have been asked to study the innovative material use of a brand or designer. I chose to exlain Nike's FlyWire technology, and their inclination towards new and sustainable materials. As well as other efforts such as their 'MAKING' app, which provides the information to enable designers to make real-time, predictive materials decisions.
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Nike Flywire is a thread, composed of Vectran®, and created by Jay Meschter, Director of innovation at Nike. Their goal is to minimize weight and maximize support on the upper part of Nike Running shoes. Flywire consists of long stitches, containing strong, lightweight liquid crystal polymer (LCP) fibers, that allow for support of the foot in key points, instead of using layers of material that support the whole foot.
