Designer Jason Mayden Breaks Down The Jordan 2009

Complex got a chance to catch up with Jason Mayden, Senior Footwear Designer for the Jordan Brand. This guy is awesome. He’s essentially been a Jordan nut since 4th grade, calculating every step of his life to get to this point: designing the new Jordan sneaker. We sat down with the new shoe, the Jordan 2009, and Jason talked us through the whole thing.

It’s a long interview, but we’re pretty sure we hit on every piece of the design behind the shoe. Check the full Q&A below (broken down in categories if you want to jump around). The Jordan 2009 LE (black/gold) drops January 31st, the General release (white/black) drops All-Star Weekend, February 14th…

Interview by Bradley Carbone

Complex: So Jason. Where do we start? Why you? How do you get to be the next guy to do a Jordan snaker?

Jason Mayden: Well, I'll give you the abridged version, so I don't have to go into the long story where we cry and everyone comes out and hugs and stuff. Every footwear designer's dream is to do the Air Jordan, so there is a lot of competition to get in there. The place is a proving ground, so I got in there and just started taking all the jobs nobody else wanted to do. I did the grunt work. I started at Jordan as an intern, and my first assignment was to design shoelaces. It was a joke job, but I took it extremely seriously. I did about 30 or 40 pages of different shoelace sketches, like lace tips, different ways you could lace shoes, everything. I did way too much work for the project, but they saw that I took my internship seriously and that I really wanted to be there, so I got an in.

Complex: Your Jordan internship came after design school?

Jason Mayden: Yes, I did the full college design school thing, but everything I've ever done since'I wanna say about 4th grade'has been geared towards designing the Air Jordan. Every single decision, people that I have befriended, shoes that I strategically wore to school to get attention, just all types of things. I grew up in Chicago on the South Side so Jordan, and the Jordan brand, has been a part of my life. It's bigger than me just doing this shoe.

Complex: Wow. That is awesome.

Jason Mayden: Yeah. Growing up I wrote a lot of letters to Nike. I would read names in articles, and then I would just call up the Headquarters over there and pretend that I knew them, just to get in the system any way that I could. This was before the Internet when you could just Google a name or something like that. I'd call and say, “Hey remember me?” They'd say, “No” and would hang up, but I would still get a few minutes just to pick their brain, ask them questions.

Complex: Most people we talk to don’t have such raw enthusiasm. We often speak with a lot of “Too cool for school” design folk. It's cool to hear your enthusiasm for the project, and the brand.

Jason Mayden: Well, when I got the internship my main goal was to one day do this shoe. I just got in there and grinded, did the things no one else wanted to do, did the dirty work, and learned everything. All of the side jobs taught me the fundamentals of footwear design. I learned about foot morphology, biomechanics, manufacturing, materials standards, graphic design, package design, footwear design, industrial design, product design. All these different things went into preparing me to design this type of product.

Complex: Can you take us through the shoe itself? What are the key elements? There's a lot of stuff going on with this shoe, but can you can talk us through the obvious visual cues and maybe some things people wouldn't notice at first glance?

Jason Mayden: Aight. I'mma give you my best Vanna White so I'll hold it like this.

Complex: Haha

Click NEXT to see Jason break down the makeup of the new Jordan