The West German sportsman and inventor Adolf Dassler was ahead of his time. Long before the creation of leisure wear and sports science, Dassler was endeavouring to perfect footwear for sports people.
Dassler set out first by making simple plimsolls in 1920, registering ‘Gebrüder Dassler Schuhfabrik’ in 1924. Later, in 1949, he would start over again and founded ‘Adi Dassler addas Sportschuhfabrik’. With a team of 47, he designed and registered the first sports shoe that featured three stripes.
A problem arose when Dassler went to register the company and the name 'addas'–a combination of his first and last name–was similar to an existing children's shoe business. Dassler then changed the company name to 'adidas', but not before printing his business cards.
The company, at this time, used a logo created by Dassler (who also came up with the 3-Stripe motif). This featured a composition of a simple illustrated spiked boot with the three stripes and a geometric all-lowercase logotype with pronounced ascenders emerging from the ‘d’s. Around this was ‘Adi Dassler Sportschuhfabrik’ set in an all-uppercase.
By 1950, this composition was reduced to just Adidas, and the lettering was refined, tightening the spacing and reducing the height of the ascenders to create a more useable and compact logotype. The ‘a’ then acquired points. This simplification and geometry reflected the functional aspects of Adidas products and was considered ‘highly-modern’ for the time. This was used with K+E Novaboard Blue.
The logo was further revised in 1967, becoming even more compact and with improved balance. It featured shorter d's lined up with a square tittle over the ‘i’, further tightening of the letter spacing, and the letter ‘a’ returned to a squared-off at the top.
What would later be known as the ‘Trefoil’ was the product of a unique intersectional moment in time. Ahead of the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, and as Adidas expanded into the apparel sector, an opportunity emerged to create a symbol that could be launched on the world stage. Emblazoned on a new generation of running shoes, the symbol intended to be associated with the highest level of achievement which would then be transferred to new lines Adidas would launch. This symbol would then accompany the logotype and 3-Stripes, broadening the brand’s palette of visual assets and support the planned diversification of products.
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