Between 1966 and 1986 Californian sports brand K-Swiss sold only one model tennis shoe without ever changing it. Today K-Swiss reverently calls it the ‘The Classic’, because every other tennis shoe that followed was derived from it. And 44 years after its launch, and with the help of Amsterdam based agency Lemon Scented Tea, K-Swiss shares the shoe’s rich history in a story of 8 chapters. Under the campaign motto ‘You gotta know your classics’, every chapter highlights one of the unique aspects of the white leather tennis shoe. On top of that K-Swiss asked 8 designers across the globe to graphically interpret the ‘chapters’ on a poster; Mario Lombardo (Berlin), Value and Service (London), Cobbenhagen & Hendriksen (Amsterdam), Mark Owens (Los Angeles), Non-Format (US), Grand People (Bergen), Fabian Jenny (Zurich) and Sung Min Choi & Sulki Choi (Seoul). Only 400 copies of each poster were printed to give the whole project limited-editionesque exclusivity. We chose to share chapter ‘K’, since we guessed most people would like to learn where the letter ‘K’ comes from. The artwork was done by Sean Murphy at Value and Service. Here’s a passage from the copy that accompanies it: “K is for Kalifornia. We know, it defies all logic, deliberately misspelling the name of our home turf like that. But to the two Swiss brothers who designed the first Classic from their L.A. garage, calling their company Kalifornia-Swiss was the most logical thing in the world. It was their way of paying homage to a place that had welcomed them with a progressive, creative and playful culture – and limitless tennis courts”. You got to love this kind of designvertising that adds heritage, profile and sophistication to a brand.