Tobin Dorn

Tobin Dorn (born May 26, 1972 in Atlanta, Georgia) is an American artist/designer best known for his contributions in the footwear industry.

He began designing athletic shoes professionally in 1996 upon graduation from the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. His first year of athletic shoe designing was for Fila and he was a designer in the cross training category having designed the first models for New York Yankee, Derek Jeter. In 1997, Puma AG contacted Dorn to lead a team of designers in SoHo, New York. Dorn designed and developed both performance and fashion running collections as well as designing concept collections with Ciano Farmer in a joint collaboration that resulted in the duo premiering on the television program, "60 Minutes", in March 2000. Dorn presented visions for the new millennium for the basketball line, "The Cage", with Farmer and was later invited to design boot concepts for Regency's new film, "X-Men", for Arnon Milchan.

Dorn moved to Brazil in 2001 and began to work with sports brand, Olympikus, designing their adventure footwear collections. In 2003, Puma AG contacted Dorn to work on the Complete Running Series. He designed various performance models for Puma and ultimately designed the innovative Olympic track suit uniforms that the Jamaican women's Olympic relay team wore at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece.

With his creation of the New Level Design studio in 2003, Dorn was able to design and develop over 50 new athletic shoes, technology concepts, logos, and apparel collections for the brands Umbro, Kappa, Fila and Tryon from 2004-06. The Brazilian beach soccer team wore the Dorn designed uniforms by Umbro in 2004. In 2006, the first of Dorn's footwear technologies was launched by Kappa, Kappapult, and the apparel technology, BodyAC. Umbro then launched their indoor soccer technology, Centipax, that was inspired from the segmented body of a centipede. Umbro then went on to launch their premium technology, SC3, that Dorn calls Skin Concept 3. This concept was inspired from human skin with its three layers and boasts maximum comfort, flexibility, stability and propulsion. Tryon's "Adventure" Series lines also debuted at the international footwear trade show, Couro Moda, in São Paulo, Brazil, 2005. Kildare Brazil worked closely with Dorn to redesign their corporate logo and brand identity in 2006. Dorn designed performance apparel collections for Gustavo Kuerten, 3 time world tennis champ, for his brand "GUGA". In August of 2006, Dorn started to work for, São Paulo Alpargatas, and is designing footwear performance collections for the brands Mizuno, Topper and Rainha.

In 2006, Dorn established the NDG, a design collective of international designers and directors delivering design solutions for brands that include logo & graphic design, sport & fashion product design, web design, photography, film and architecture.

External links

* [http://www.ndgstudios.com/ The Official Site of the NDG]
* [http://www.newleveldesign.com/ The Official Site of New Level Design]