profile / alumni / product-design
April 25, 2014
Writer: Christine Spines

Just Design It 

Rob Bruce (BS 93)

As global innovation design director at Jordan Brand, Product Design alumnus Rob Bruce is the designated visionary at the Nike-owned sneaker label. As such, he’s drawn from the brand’s past successes—last year re-releasing the iconic Air Jordan—while developing Flight Plate, a groundbreaking athletic footwear technology that enables bipeds to achieve greater lift-off.

“It’s kind of like all these little micro explosions under your feet when you’re running or just walking around,” Bruce recently said in an article on Stack, extolling Jordan Brand’s Flight Plate-equipped XX8 basketball shoe, widely embraced by professional players and sneakerheads.

With Flight Plate successfully road (and court) tested, Bruce and his team in the Nike Sports Research Lab turned their attention to the Christmas release of the shoe’s more affordable next iteration, Jordan Brand’s XX8SE—which quickly sold out.

“I’m focused totally on the future and working with the athletes and trainers and the lab,” said Bruce, “to get Air Jordan back to that on-court supremacy we enjoyed so well when Michael was playing in his heyday.”